Machtelt Eggink

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We have all been there, spending hours on online shopping websites and ending up sending over half of your new clothes back. Beside the disappointment you have to make an effort repacking your purchases and taking them to a post office. To get you money back will take at least a couple of weeks. What if I told you that this could be over soon? In the future we will all be able to fit online clothing on our own bodies in a 3D fitting room!

Online clothes shopping is becoming more and more popular for consumers. However, much of the purchases gets sent back. The percentage of clothes which are returned to the retailers after online sale can be up to 40% (CNBC). The return package, checking of the items, and the repackaging all cost the retailers money. After the consumers and retailers, the environment is also suffering from the unnecessary transportation.

Fortunately ideas are being developed to reduce the percentage of returned clothing items. Research has 86% of returned clothes in Sweden are sent back because of a wrong size or fit (Statista). Many people buy multiple products of the same item in different sizes to increase the chance of buying the right one. It’s time to bring this number down.

ZOZO, a Japanese company, has developed an app where consumers can see how the item fits their own body in 3D. The consumer is sent a ZOZOSUIT, containing more than 350 white unique dots. During measurement, the ZOZO app takes 12 photos of the consumer and captures where each unique dot is located in space. The proprietary algorithm processes this spatial data and triangulates a 3D rendering of your body. These measurements are more accurate than a human tailor. These measurements can be used to fit clothing in 3D visualizers. This revolutionary technology brings 3D body scanning into the home and makes it both accessible, affordable, and accurate for the first time in history.

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https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/16/a-260-billion-ticking-time-bomb-the-costly-business-of-retail-returns.html

https://www.statista.com/statistics/685426/reasons-to-return-online-purchased-clothes-in-sweden/

https://zozo.com/nl/en/info/suit

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After subscribing to Netflix for watching movies and to Spotify for listening to music, are people ready to subscribe for art in their living room? ArtMgt is an e-commerce startup that is reinventing the way we rent and buy original works of art from critically acclaimed artists.

ArtMgt offers the opportunity to enjoy exceptional artworks without the commitment of spending thousands of dollars. A subscription costs $50 per month and includes insurance and shipping costs. This makes art available to many people with lower incomes. On the other hand are most artists experiencing unpredictability in their monthly income, and ArtMgt seeks to provide a more steady source of income to them. What distinguishes ArtMgt compared to other art rental companies is the website where you can find a specially developed, user friendly art search engine, where you can enter criteria like price category, colors used, or media type and more. As a user, you can organize and save the works online that you are selecting for your home or business. If you want to share your new artwork on social media, you can instantly download it in PDF version. (ArtMgt)

Today’s economy is revealed in what society is consuming: valuing “access over ownership.” People increasingly think it’s more important to enjoy an experience rather than collect and own the products (Haddad, 2015). Millennials don’t seem to have the same collecting gene as previous generations. This doesn’t sound good for the art market, which relies on a cult of possessing (Gerlis, 2018). The art industry has to look for alternative ways to do business. ArtMgt is a great example of adaptation to these changes.

However, they also need to think ahead. The next step might be a version of the sharing economy, where people rent out their art on a platform like Airbnb. The question will be whether that is good for the art industry or not. While ArtMgt’s end goal is to eventually sell the art, a sharing platform for art might make art sales decrease even further and hurt the artist’s wallet. For consumers however, it will be an easy and affordable way to enrich their lives with art. How long will it take for us to start sharing our luxury products like this?

Sources:

ArtMgt: https://www.artmgt.com/

Haddad: http://www.create-hub.com/comment/art-and-the-sharing-economy/

Gerlis: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/can-the-art-market-thrive-in-a-sharing-economy

Your body in a 3D fitting room

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