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With fitting rooms expected to remain shuttered for the foreseeable future, retailers are experimenting with new tools to help shoppers try on clothing before they buy it: namely virtual dressing rooms.
The use of augmented and virtual reality technology has been on the rise in recent years, and industry experts expect the use of these tools to further grow during a pandemic that has rendered sampling and trying on products in person obsolete.
Though such tools have already been adopted predominantly in the beauty industry — customers at companies like Sephora and Ulta have long been able to “try on” different hues of makeup with the help of a screen — they’re now beginning to appear at major apparel and jewelry retailers such as Macy’s and Adidas.
According to Ben Parr, president and cofounder of marketing platform Octane AI, there has been an uptick in retailers experimenting with virtual fitting rooms in response to the pandemic, ranging from smaller brands like the menswear-company Knot Standard to e-commerce giants like Shopify.
“The benefits of virtual fitting rooms during a pandemic are clear — lower risk of exposure to COVID-19 and the ease of getting fitted from home,” Parr said in an email. “I think it will surprise many Americans that, in 2020, this technology is quite sophisticated and shockingly accurate. This will result in the continued spike of e-commerce sales that we’ve seen throughout the pandemic.”
Despite the array of virtual tools now at the disposal of shoppers, Parr said the main hurdle for these technologies is consumer education and retention. In 2018, 60% of respondents of PwC’s global consumer insight survey stated they had used virtual reality in some capacity. Yet trying clothing on via an avatar on your mobile phone is still not common practice.
One company looking to take virtual fitting rooms mainstream is Zeekit, an Israel-based fashion technology firm, which has already partnered with brands like Macy’s, Adidas, and Modcloth to help shoppers get an idea of what a garment looks like on their body without physically trying it on. On the Zeekit app, users can upload a full-body photo and then try on clothing from participating brands and make purchases facilitated through the app.
Zeekit has also helped brands like ASOS conduct virtual photo shoots during the pandemic, a process that has helped the company connect with more diverse models with a wider range of body types to feature on its site.
“The crisis in the retail world has also created an opportunity to reinvent and revolutionize the way this industry operates,” Yael Vizel, co-founder of Zeekit, said in a statement earlier this month. “Right now it’s all about personalization. We live in the era of the selfie generation and Zeekit is taking that to the next step, giving every brand and retailer the opportunity to extend their presence into the reality of their customers’ lives.”
According to Zeekit, early data shows the service has helped reduce return rates for partners by 36%.
Jonathan Treiber, CEO of offer-management platform RevTrax, said emerging technologies like Zeekit’s may prove instrumental in aiding beleaguered retailers further burdened by the costs associated with handling online returns, which have swelled in recent months as a result of temporary store closures.
“Online apparel has a high return rate because of this trial-and-error approach to sizing and therefore has a substantial cost for retailers handling apparel returns online,” Trieber told Business Insider. “It’s been very common for customers to order multiples of an item in different sizes to ensure at least one item fits with the intent to return the rest. This is a highly inefficient, costly and time consuming process for all parties.
Ultimately, Parr says that while virtual fitting rooms have the potential to become commonplace, he is wary of it having longevity once the pandemic subsides.