Hacking the Levi's Hackathon
How often have you tried on jeans that seemed to fit perfectly on hips but were too loose on the waist?
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Or a blouse of the right length but too short on the sleeves or too tight on the shoulders?
Isn't it frustrating to order a much-wanted garment, wait for the parcel to arrive and still not be able to wear it?
How many times have you returned clothes to the store?
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We were selected last month from over 350 companies to work on this problem for Levi’s - to hack and prototype solutions as part of LS&Co’s Denim Decoded Hackathon.
The fit & size problem has always been a pain for consumers - according to a McKinsey survey, 70% of returns were caused by incorrect sizing. In reality, the issue is complex as it involves a range of operational challenges for retailers, which come with a price. And with return rates on the rise, more difficulties arise.
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The first step to solving a problem is to identify its root. Why do clothes not fit? The answer is potentially simple if the data were available. Despite the DTC business model, brands do not know their real consumers - their actual body shapes and measurements.
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There is more to the size than S M L
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This is where technology can help. At Aistetic, just like we aim to help fashion brands to become more size-inclusive, we want to contribute to sustainable development by reducing returns, excess inventory, and, consequently, clothing waste.
Our current solution is a white-labelled plugin that enables brands to accurately measure, understand fit preferences, and suggest sizes to online shoppers. We’re at 98% measurement accuracy right now. You can see it working here.
Being part of this Hackathon we showcased our solution as an answer to the question of how to address these problems, whilst enhancing and providing a seamless consumer experience for Levi’s customers.
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Backstage Product Development
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We now want to share a little bit of our journey backstage within our product development.
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After choosing a particular pair of jeans a user would like to buy, he or she goes through a quick scans, allowing our AI algorithms to capture their body metrics and suggest size recommendations aligned to the brand's size chart. Upon completion, the user goes back to shop and receives a notification to check their size profile.
To enhance personalization and improve the fit, we've made a couple of adjustments. Let's take a closer.
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In creating the user's 3D body model, we were able to accurately recommend the correct length of jeans, which was previously based on the height and weight correlation of that person rather than reflecting the actual measurements of that person.
We were also able to understand the user's unique shape and recommend jeans ranges that would flatter them, and thus developed some style suggestions.
You can see here an example of a person - based on their particular shape and body measurements, bootcut and loose jeans would suit them, and provide an illusion of length.
Our solution also adapts to each person - for another person whose shape is top-heavy, the style suggestion is adapted to boot cut and loose to balance out their figure which you can see here.
We also prototyped 2 additional fit features - one to show their true fit for Levis. In other words, if users' measurements fall between sizes, they can see which brand's size would fit them the best.
And the second - is to show the shopper how their size, shape and recommendations compare to others. In this instance, 85% of similarly shaped individuals bought this size and were happy with it.
We were delighted to take part, to demonstrate the value of our solution and how it can add value to the Levi’s s unique shopping experience. Within 2 weeks we made huge amounts of progress and had a lot of fun working with our Levi's Mentor Nate Brennan, talented UX/UI Designers Daniela Kostova & Annie Raymond, Levi’s Developers Shan Natarajan and Krishna Sujana alongside our own talented Aistetic Team.
Let's cut waste
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We want to contribute to the fashion industry's development, to cut waste, and to push the limits of tech to deliver rewarding and state of the art shopping experiences and more value to customers. A big thank you to Levi’s, & F6S for this intense & fun Hackathon! We got to work with such diverse & smart team members, we got to challenge our thinking for the better and this enabled us to go further and faster with our features and benefits.
Please do get in touch so that we can talk further and make these benefits available to your business and customers.