Sizing issues are a significant challenge for fashion retailers — especially when customers are shopping online. In general, both parties have come to expect that occasionally buying the wrong size is just part of the e-commerce experience.
However, a new technology may help companies find the perfect fit for their customers. 3D body scanning allows consumers to provide retailers with their precise body measurements — allowing for highly accurate sizing when they shop online. Here’s how this tech has advanced to the point where it can benefit companies and shoppers alike and potentially disrupt the fashion industry.
Product Fit and Returns Remain a Major Challenge for Online Fashion Retailers
Finding the right fit can be challenging, especially when shopping online. Customers can use the sizing information retailers provide. Still, it can be challenging to select the right size or visualize how a particular garment will fit without trying on the garment in real life.
As a result, many customers find that the apparel they buy online doesn’t fit well or match their style once they see it in person. Some customers even plan to receive items that don’t fit. They will use “bracketing” — or the practice of ordering the same thing in multiple sizes and returning what doesn’t fit well — to ensure something will work.
Even if every other aspect of the customer’s experience is positive, receiving a garment that does not fit can leave a bad impression. This can ultimately lead them not to shop with a brand in the future.
According to research from Morgan Stanley, product fit and returns are two of the biggest barriers for online fashion shoppers. However, online shopping has become more important for retailers of all kinds in a post-COVID world.
Companies can manage this challenge with a robust return program, but these offerings can significantly cut into profit margins. Free returns require retailers to budget for frequent round-trip shipping to ensure customers will eventually receive a garment that fits properly.
Ongoing supply chain woes and shortages of essential raw materials can make returns hit retailers even harder. Managing reverse logistics becomes even more painful when it’s more difficult to ship goods to customers at all.
How 3D Scanning Can Help Retailers Find the Perfect Fit
3D scanning apps allow customers to use cameras and lasers to capture their precise body measurements. This technology has been around for 30 years, but it’s become much more accessible.
Smartphones have become advanced enough to support fairly accurate body scanning technology. Most offer sophisticated cameras, and a handful of available phones use lasers to provide features like facial recognition.
Several 3D body scanning apps are available, allowing any customer with a smartphone to take advantage of the technology. People can also take advantage of businesses or body scanning tools that have arrived on the market over the past few years.
Using 3D Scanning to Streamline Online Fashion Shopping
Customers could export their measurements and body scans to e-commerce sites while shopping for clothes. Retailers could use this information to ensure buyers always receive clothes that fit.
For example, retailers could design online storefronts that either accept these measurements or integrate directly with body scanning apps, then provide filters based on a customer’s unique physique. The storefront could display only the clothes that are likely to fit.
In addition to providing customers with more accurate fit information, these 3D body scans could effectively allow retailers to create virtual dressing rooms. For example, some retailers already use body scanning in product development. This can support design techniques like body mapping, which designers use to construct a garment in line with how the body moves.
These retailers may already have digitized 3D versions of the garments they sell. They could provide tools that overlay these clothes on a model that uses the customer’s measurements, allowing them to see roughly how an appropriately sized item will fit them in real life.
These measurements and 3D models could also allow customers to virtually try on new clothes and visualize how a particular garment would fit.
In practice, virtual dressing rooms that take advantage of body scans, customer photos and garment models could solve the return and fit problem of online fashion shopping.
3D Scanning Could Improve Fashion’s Bottom Line
Even modest reductions in the return rate on apparel purchases could significantly increase a company’s profit margin. According to Morgan Stanley, just a “5% reduction in the rate of product returns could double earnings before income and taxes for an online apparel retailer, all else equal.”
3D body scanning technology could also support offerings like remote tailoring. This allows businesses to personalize the sizing of garments over the web based on information provided by a customer. For example, someone may submit their measurements and speak with a tailor over the web who will adapt apparel to their specific size or style requirements.
It may even be possible to automate this resizing process in some cases. One example is Sizer’s partnership with bra brand Wacoal America. The two companies teamed up during the pandemic to develop an AI-powered app that helps customers find the right bra size within just a few minutes.
Several other companies are also experimenting with virtual sizing and try-on apps that allow customers to visualize a garment’s fit before committing to a purchase.
3D Scanning May Help Fashion Tackle Its Return Problem
Experts predict that online shopping will continue to grow quickly over the next few years. Even as customers return to shopping in person, e-commerce will continue to become more important to the fashion industry at large. As a result, retailers will need to contend with the difficulty of properly sizing garments when shopping online. Tools like 3D body scanners can be a powerful way for businesses to ensure customers receive clothes that fit well.
Some retailers have already started to develop virtual sizing and try-on apps for their customers. Combining these apps with 3D body scanning technology could help fashion solve its product fit and return problems.
