Clothing sector leads the Ecommerce boom…
Expectations about ecommerce are really optimistic: eMarketer forecasts a 20% rise in 2014 and expects the 2013 ecommerce sales to double by 2017. Among the $1.251 trillions of worldwide ecommerce revenue in 2013, a large part is attributed to clothing purchases, reveal yStats researchers in the “Global Clothing B2C E-Commerce Report 2013″. Indeed, in 2012, 20% of Europeans buy clothes or sports goods online. Apparel and accessories also attract US online shoppers: Emarketer expects this category to reach 20% of US online retail sales and account for $73 billion worth by 2016.
… driven by mobile purchasing
According to the Center for Retail Research, ecommerce growth is mainly sustained by the rise of sales via smartphone and tablet. Americans are again ahead of Europeans with 14% of online purchases made on either a smartphone or tablet in 2013, for a total of $36 billion. In comparison, Europeans remain at 8%, but tend to catch up with a 85% rise in Mcommerce sales against 62% in the US.
Out of 100 online shoppers, less than 3 actually buy an article
Online shopping increasingly attracts consumers. Who doesn’t like to shop from one’s couch on a rainy Sunday afternoon? However, eshopping can be really annoying: there are plenty of brand websites, too many filters, not to mention the high probability to have to return the articles that don’t really fit. Ecommerce conversion rate confirms it. Only 2.7% of Americans who visited an ecommerce website actually bought something (2013).
As explained in Rakuten Linkshare study, men experiencing online shopping feel lost when confronted to a plethora of choices. The emergence of social shopping is a first step to making shopping easier: benefitting from the community’s experience to make your own choice. However, this doesn’t solve the issue of fitting.
Is it really going to fit me?
Online shopping lacks the fitting room experience. Everyone’s morphology is unique and saying you wear an S, M or L isn’t quite precise enough. Hence a 30% return rate in the clothing industry, mainly due to fitting.
This is one of the challenges that Asos CEO Nick Robertson has to deal with in order to improve the shopping experience for his customers: “If you don’t have to return something then clearly that is a better experience than having to return something”.
A Fashion and Tech startup decided to take up the challenge
Fitle is a personalized and smart shopping platform, on which users can try clothes on their 3D selves.
Thanks to a few photos, Fitle’s intuitive App will create a custom 3D avatar of yourself that possesses your exact measurements and looks like you. It lets you virtually try on, swap out and mix and match all your clothing choices in just a few seconds.
A personalized shopping experience
As a Techcrunch journalist pointed out, Fitle is about both Fit and Style. Fitle learns from your daily browsing habits to further refine your shopping experience. It automatically sorts all the clothes from partner brands and selects for you only what would fit you, body and style. The times when you had to spend hours to find your dream jacket are finally over.
Plus, you can securely store all past purchases on your connected wardrobe, and pair on your avatar the jeans you bought months ago with a sweater you plan to purchase today.
A promising start
Fitle recently launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Fitle reveals to Gizmag that it raises funds “for the industrialization of its 3D clothes modeling process, to increase its partner network, to further improve its accuracy and to run beta testing of the technology”. Future users respond very well to Fitle’s solution since the startup reached and even exceeded its goal of $50,000.
Next step will be the official launch in the US and French markets, planned for early 2015.
Now I want to know, when is it going to expand to the UK market as well?
Fashion and marketing student
