Apparel retailer Warehouse, part of the Aurora Fashions group,
has launched a virtual fitting room on its website enabling
customers to “try on” clothes.
After entering their measurements and uploading their photo,
consumers can try on pieces that have been specially digitised by
technology provider Metail.
The service has been launched on Warehouse’s dress collection,
its best-selling online category, with the intention of rolling
it out to additional categories in the future.
The news comes as another virtual fitting room provider, Fits.me,
announces that the UK has become a nation of
“returners”. According to its survey of 1,000
consumers, two-fifths of Brits buy multiple sizes of the same
garment when shopping online just to check the fit. The item that
doesn’t fit is then returned, costing the retailer
“enormous sums of money”, says Heikki Haldre, founder
and chief executive of Fits.me.
He adds, “Consumers don’t trust the sizing information they
see online, and with good reason: there are no universal sizing
standards, and sizing may vary considerably even within a single
retailer. And there’s no way they can physically try on the
garment. They’re learning that the ‘free returns’ offered by
retailers works to their advantage; it means they can order
multiple sizes but return the one or more that they don’t
want.”
A recent study of conversions and returns at shirtmaker Hawes and
Curtis showed that its virtual fitting room was responsible for
an improvement in conversion rates of 57 per cent for first-time
customers, and a 35 per cent fall in its overall garment return
rates.
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