A growing cluster of tech companies are now attempting to fix the problem. <\/p>\n
Tools such as 3DLook, True Fit and EasySize focus on helping customers choose the right size at checkout, using body scans via smartphone photos to suggest the most accurate fit.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, virtual fitting-room platforms including Google’s virtual try-on, Doji, Alta, Novus, DRESSX Agent and WEARFITS allow shoppers to create digital avatars and preview how items might look. These systems aim to increase confidence when buying online.<\/p>\n
More recently, AI-powered shopping agents have begun entering the market too. Daydream, allows users to describe what they are looking for and then recommends options. <\/p>\n
OneOff pulls together looks from celebrities to find similar items, while Phia scans tens of thousands of websites to compare prices and surface early “size insights.”<\/p>\n
While these tools work at the e-commerce stage, a new UK start-up, Fit Collective, is taking a different approach: trying to prevent the problem earlier in the production process.<\/p>\n
Founder Phoebe Gormley argues AI can potentially fix the sizing before clothes reach the stores.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old – who is no data scientist, rather a tailor – previously launched Savile Row’s first female tailors, making made-to-measure garments for a range of women. <\/p>\n
“They would all come in and say, ‘high-street sizing is so bad’,” she tells me.<\/p>\n
She says fashion’s current model is a “downward spiral” where brands make cheaper garments to offset huge return rates, which leads to unhappy customers and more waste. <\/p>\n
Since launching last year, Fit Collective has raised \u00a33 million in pre-seed funding, reportedly the largest amount ever secured by a solo female founder in the UK. <\/p>\n
“As far as we know, we are the first solution comparing all the manufacturing data and the commercial data,” she says. <\/p>\n
Phoebe’s new venture uses machine learning to analyse a range of data – including returns, sales figures and customer emails – to really understand why something didn’t fit.<\/p>\n
It then turns this into clear advice for design and production teams, who can adjust patterns, sizing and materials before manufacturing begins.<\/p>\n
Her system may tell a firm, for example, to take a few centimetres off the length of an item of clothing to reduce the number of returns overall. This saves money for the company and time for the consumer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A growing cluster of tech companies are now attempting to fix the problem. Tools such as 3DLook, True…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-264077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}