A tool that can help online shoppers find styles that suit them is something of a holy grail for fashion: one that promises to reduce expensive returns, increase profit margins and give customers a better experience.
But even in the age of artificial intelligence, fitness is a tough nut to crack.
More from WWDNow, fit tech developer and direct-to-consumer brand Laws of Motion is turning heads with a bold claim: The company says its proprietary AI-powered fit predictions have achieved 99 percent accuracy. Laws of Motion and its founder, CEO Carly Bigi, are using that result in a new company, with new funding, to bring the technology to other brands.
A fashion brand built to support technology (and not the other way around)
Laws of Motion is not a fashion company that built its own appropriate technology out of necessity. This is a technology company that needed to test and learn, so it created a clothing brand that would serve as a real-world laboratory where it could develop and iterate on its technology.
This is a distinction with a big difference, right down to the basics: the way it trained its AI models. "We started 2019 with 10,000 bodies, which amounts to about a million data points," Bigi told WWD. "And we have now collected just over 2 billion body size data points within our own direct-to-consumer brand."
When it comes to data collection, the method matters.
As a technology-driven direct-to-consumer brand offering custom-made fashion, the company does not hold inventory, but produces fashion based on fit predictions. To get started, customers complete a quiz or upload a few selfies and can also enter their measurements, if they know them. Offering options has an advantage because people can choose the fitting method that feels most comfortable to them.
The company noticed that people aged 45 and younger prefer the body scan. Those between 45 and 60 flock to the fit quiz, while those over 60 "know their measurements to within an eighth of an inch, which I'm so impressed with," Bigi said. "So for brands that serve a broad customer demographic, they need to be able to meet a customer where they are, in terms of their comfort and use of the technology."
The AI model goes from there to predict the size, and then the company tailors the garment. Initially it was the Alpha, a classic sheath dress with simple lines. Any adjustments to the technology are based on customer feedback and other information, such as returns.
This process is crucial and is multiplied across the customer base and product catalog - which now includes various dresses, trousers, blouses, jumpsuits and even wedding gowns - allowing the system to be quickly and continuously improved. "It has allowed us a feedback loop of accuracy that you otherwise wouldn't have if you were creating technology in a silo and then licensing it," she said.
That describes many, if not most, third-party developers and platforms working in good tech. The obvious exceptions are Stitch Fix and Amazon, and neither pegs their accuracy to a specific percentage. But the stakes are high. According to Statista, about 16.5 percent of the $1.3 trillion worth of goods sold online in the U.S. in 2022 were returned.
The screenplay makes Laws of Motion's near-perfect accuracy claim seem all the bolder. But according to the CEO, she has the receipts - literally. Because the figure comes directly from her clothing brand's real-world performance and, she said, it is a validated metric that is compared to the company's benchmark data.
It also explains how the brand achieved a return rate of less than 1 percent and a customer retention rate of 86 percent.
"If you answer our quiz or upload some photos, the predicted body measurements we have for you as a customer will be within 99 percent accuracy of the actual body," she stated.
Laws of motion are in motion
Encouraged by the results, Laws of Motion is moving into high gear.
The company created a huge range of 1,260 'micro sizes' and shapes based on its data and demand, from 00 to 40. In recent weeks it then expanded into a new offering to work with brands as a technology provider - which, again , was always the goal.
The first to sign up is Eddy, the bohemian women's clothing brand founded by Megan Eddings Feely, formerly of Ralph Lauren and Tory Burch. About a dozen others are in the process of closing deals, including some well-known contemporary and luxury brands, Bigi said. She could not reveal specific names because the contracts were not yet known at the time of going to press.
What she has achieved so far is impressive, especially for someone without a fashion background. Therein lies the twist: Before launching Laws of Motion, Bigi was a Deloitte consultant with an MBA from Columbia Business School. But she saw the need and decided to think about the problem in a fresh way. That's quite evident in everything from her technical approach to her fees.
Essentially, Laws of Motion as a platform only benefits if the partners make money.
"The pricing is structured so that we get a percentage of the increased revenue from higher conversion for customers who use the technology," she explains. "We also get a fixed percentage of savings from the lower returns for customers using the technology.
"It's important that we can show in real time the impact the technology is having, and that's the first time this has ever been done with a custom solution."
Bigi is now a new addition to Inc.'s list of female founders. Magazine and might have felt more comfortable on the venture capital circuit lately. It's not her first time. She dipped a toe into pre-seed financing - more for networking than fundraising, she said - and raised $1.5 million from investors like Jenny Fleiss, the co-founder of Rent the Runway and Columbia's Lang Fund.
On Wednesday, the company unveiled a $5 million seed round that is attracting investors such as Corazon Capital, Sequoia Capital's The Scout Program, Leadout Capital and others from the tech and fashion sectors, including Eva Jeanbart-Lorenzotti, senior consumer advisor of Raine Group and Irving Place. Capital's John Howard, who is also a board member of Good American, Skims and Frame.
For Sam Yagan, co-founder and CEO of Corazon, Laws of Motion has wiped away the rust of skepticism he had developed over the years about fit technology.
He may be known as the co-founder of OkCupid or for his stint at match.com, but Yagan also served as CEO of ShopRunner from 2016 to 2021. Working with luxury brands and department stores, he saw firsthand how fashion and their technology partners approach sizing challenges.
"I showed up at all the conferences and NRF and Shoptalk and all that, and... there are a billion appropriate solutions," he told WWD. "Over the course of the four years I spent in the industry. I started to hate every suitable solution I saw."
For Yagan, they create a false sense of security or accuracy that crumbles as soon as the customer meets the eye. It's enough to drive higher conversions, but that often came with high returns that offset profits.
"I remember being introduced to Carly. I almost didn't go to the meeting," he said. "And of course they had AI, and it was like, 'Oh God, that makes me even more nauseous.'" But her return rate amazed him, and if she could drastically reduce that for other brands too, that would be 'crazy' , he said.
There's reason to believe she can, especially since Bigi believes it - so much so that she puts her money where her mouth is. "A lot of these guys want to get paid for conversion increases, because like I said, that's easy. What is really difficult to achieve is lower returns. I believe these types of performance-based pricing models are truly game-changing."
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