In today’s world it is hard to imagine ordering yourself an outfit online that perfectly fits your body. It has therefore become relatively normal to order multiple garments, only to finally find the garment of the right size. This problem comes at a price for both consumers who often time have to pay extra return costs and retailers who heavily depend on transportation; one of the leading contributors to the increasing amount of air pollution (WHO, 2012).
An article in the Jing Daily mentioned that ABODY.AI has developed an AI-solution to tackle this challenge that the garment industry has been facing for a long time, so I decided to give it a try (Ryder, 2023.
To be able to make use of this AI tool, it is necessary to first add the ABODY.AI Chrome Extension. After adding this extension, it is both possible to connect the extension with your ABODY.AI application or input your measurements yourself.
I decided to download the application and follow all required steps to hopefully be able to find the true potential of this AI tool. As visible in the below steps you can either measure yourself or get measured by a friend.
After choosing to measure myself, it was required to take 2 pictures where I had to pose in a similar way like the models. The requirement of only 2 pictures made me question if the end -result of my measurements was going to be very accurate. This is probably compensated by the some more general information I had to fill out like gender, height, weight, and age. To improve this tool in the future, more pictures/general information should probably be required.
The results were quite spot on in terms of measurements. The only mistake I made was to wear a very tight shirt with a jogging pants that is very big and wide; Maybe I should have used this application before… After the measurements show in your application, you will be able to easily transfer the information to the chrome extension by scanning a QR code. The final picture below shows the transferred data.
ABODY.AI has partnered with big garment brands such as Adidas and Nike, who collaborate by sharing the best possible fit with the ABODY.AI users. This allows you to instantly find the right fit in terms of big brands’ jackets, pants, T-Shirts, etc. These are all categories however for which there might still be different sizes within for instance the T-Shirt category, possibly causing issues.
What takes this AI-tool to the next level, however, is the possibilities that it now offers with your Chrome extension. Since I was in need of a True Classic T-shirt, I decided to try out this extension on the Amazon website. Once the extension was activated, I received size recommendations on each and every garment I checked which were relatively accurate; quite awesome if you ask me!
Reflecting on the use of this tool, I definitely see how this AI tool could potentially lower the overall return rates and increase the shopping experience by making it more personalized, easy, and fun to shop. I do, however, believe that the tool would really have to prove itself and its accuracy in order for this tool to be widely adopted. In fact, I am not yet fully convinced myself at the moment that the tool is going to always offer me the right true fit size.
Would you order less different sizes when applying this tool? Or is there a specific garment that you would buy faster knowing an application would give you the right size recommendation based on your fit?
World Health Organization. (2012). Health in the green economy: health co-benefits of climate change mitigation-transport sector. World Health Organization.
Ryder, B. (2023). The perfect fit: AI emerges as answer to fashion’s sizing conundrum. Jing Daily, September 5.
