Shoppers at Rihanna’s lingerie brand Savage X Fenty may soon find it easier than ever to find products that fit their measurements. Last year, the brand made an investment in a four-year-old, Miami-based startup called FIT:MATCH; now, Savage X Fenty is employing FIT:MATCH’s tech in a growing number of its retail stores, starting with a location in Atlanta, Georgia.
How it works right now: shoppers who opt in to the “experience” step into a fitting room where, using lidar sensors made by Intel, FIT:MATCH creates an anonymized avatar based on the individual’s body shape that it compares with a database of so-called digital twins to find the best-fitting products for the shopper. According to FIT:MATCH founder and CEO Haniff Brown, no videos or pictures are stored; the process also takes less than 30 seconds from beginning to end, says the company.
It’s the start of what FIT:MATCH hopes will be a much longer journey, says Brown, whose startup has so far raised $10 million in funding across two tranches, including from Alante Capital and Fabletics, a brand that, like Savage X Fenty, is part of TechStyle Fashion Group, an L.A.-based brand incubator whose spin-outs charge customers monthly for credits toward their purchases. (Both Savage X Fenty and Fabletics operate using this membership model.)
Savage X Fenty is obviously a good partner to have, considering the notorious difficultly most women face in finding lingerie that fits them just right. The outfit is growing its bricks-and-mortar footprint somewhat quickly. After opening its first location early last year in Las Vegas, five more followed, including in Atlanta, and the brand says more are coming, including to Detroit, St. Louis, and Chicago.
But FIT:MATCH is also being trialed by Macy’s, whose associates can scan customers with their iPhones in the privacy of the store’s fitting rooms to more quickly assist them in finding the right bra size. Indeed, if all goes as planned, a much bigger market for FIT:MATCH will center on at-home shoppers who similarly use their iPhone’s lidar combined with the startup’s body mapping technology for use across participating retailers.
FIT:MATCH will be competing with a growing spate of 3D body scanning apps if so, but Brown insists that FIT:MATCH has a secret weapon its chief data scientist, Jie Pei, who developed the body-mapping technology while pursuing her Ph.D. from Cornell’s College of Human Ecology. (Cornell has since licensed three of the patents on which she worked to FIT:MATCH.)
Pei’s work is sufficiently compelling that Brown — who previously worked at Credit Suisse and Freeman Spogli, focusing on investing in retail and consumer companies — says FIT:MATCH has already received interest from other brands wanting a stake in the company. He adds that his 30-person company chose to sign a contract with Savage X Fenty as a starting point based on its similar growth objectives. After all, like FIT:MATCH, the lingerie brand is quite young, having been founded less than five years ago, in the spring of 2018.
Shiv has over 8 years experience working on Internet of Things and an avid user of Drones
