Fittery Launches New Platform to Help Men Find the Perfect Fit (Women Coming Soon!)

You know that feeling when you order something online, it arrives and doesn’t fit?  Now, imagine if you could order clothes online that would fit perfectly, saving you so many frustrations and return headaches. Fittery is a platform where you can submit your size and shape and in return they will show you a list of items by brands like J.Crew, Club Monaco and Brooks Brothers that will fit you best.

Greg Vilines, Fittery’s co-founder and member of Fashion Mingle, shared insights on his motivation for creating this innovative fashion-tech platform and tips to help fashion designers create the right fit for their collection.

3 Important Sizing Tips for Fashion Designers

1. Don’t rely on a fit model: 
One of the staples of the fashion industry, and also one of the most misleading, is the idea of the fit model. Fit models usually represent the typical size of your target demographic, but unfortunately, that’s only one data point.
2. Get as much fit feedback as you can: 
Try to get as much fit feedback as you can before finalizing production. The actual population is much more diverse than the fit models used in the industry, and making grading decisions around one data point can lead to mismatched fits.
3. Know how different bodies will look in your designs: Since every body is slightly different, understanding how different bodies will respond to garments can get a designer a much richer view of how to satisfy their customers.

Q&A with Greg Vilines, Founder of Fittery

Fashion Mingle: What inspired you to create Fittery?  

Greg Vilines: Fit is a problem that my partner Catherine and I faced in our day to day lives. We were fed up with not understanding how well an item would fit before we bought it online and what items would actually give us the look we wanted. We were also frustrated with constantly returning things we bought online because they didn’t fit or match our expectations. Having built many eCommerce and marketplace experiences in our careers, we knew letting shoppers compare all their options to understand what would fit them best could really transform the way people shop.

FM: What’s the main problem with fit in the retail industry?

GV: There are quite a few fit issues that make the shopping process difficult. It’s very difficult to know just from a clothing label how well something will fit. For example, a slim fit Medium shirt can vary by nearly half a foot in the chest from retailer to retailer, even though they’re marked the same size.

• Fit is in the eye of the beholder. A “Slim” fit to one person may be an “Extra Slim” to another, since every shopper’s body and ideas of comfort and style are different.
• Brands don’t have enough tools to understand exactly what their customer looks like. Getting a great picture of what fits your target demographic is hard when most of the data you have coming in are return reason codes saying “It doesn’t fit”.
• All these poor-fitting clothes have a real cost. The average return rate for online clothing purchases is 30-40%, which significantly cuts into margins for retailers and creates huge headaches for shoppers.

FM: What were the key challenges you had to overcome to get Fittery launched?

GV: The biggest challenge we had to overcome was actually developing the technology to predict fit. We spend nearly half a year testing to make sure we could very accurately predict how well a garment would fit, while really understanding the combination of art and science that fit entails. Once we proved that we could do that very effectively, we focused on building a great user experience to help shoppers find and discover great fitting clothes.

FM: How does Fittery work to ensure the perfect fit?

GV: We’re a marketplace – initially focused on menswear – that matches shoppers to great-fitting clothes from the best brands, including J.Crew, Bonobos, Express, Brooks Brothers, and more. Using our tools, men can quickly enter information about their size and shape (it only takes 42 seconds!) and Fittery matches them to items that fit them perfectly. Our algorithms search thousands of products in real-time using item-level information from our retail partners and present shoppers with specific items that work best for them. Basically, we take a process that would take hours in fitting rooms and simplify it to a few seconds online.

FM: Where do you see Fittery in the next three years?

GV: I’m very optimistic about where Fittery will be when it’s all grown up, building on our strong growth since launching in August of last year. In the next three years, we plan to:

• Expand our marketplace to cover every category of men’s and women’s clothing, so no matter what you’re buying, you’ll be able to find what makes you look and feel your best.
• Significantly grow our roster of brands, up from the over 40 apparel companies we have signed today.
• Launch our tools for retailers and designers to get deeper insights into the customers they’re working to serve.
• Create experiences that help shoppers know not just what will fit their body but also their style.

Fittery’s vision is ultimately to fully reinvent the way people shop for clothes online by creating a closer connection between the real-world shopping experience and the online world. Fittery is in a great position to help the world shop smarter.

You can learn more about the Fittery team on this “Fashion Is Your Business” Podcast. If you think Fitteryis the perfect fit for you, try out the platform for yourself. And if you want to connect with more innovative fashion companies, sign up for our nationwide fashion directory to connect, collaborate, and create with more fashion professionals just like Greg Vilines.