The big hurdle in selling clothes online is that many shoppers prefer to try clothes on in order to know if it suits them. When they do buy fashion online, there is also a high rate of returns – leading to higher delivery costs for the retailer.
But now a new tool has been launched that may answer that problem. Garmentology, designed for retailers to embed on their ecommerce sites, takes shoppers through an online image consultation.
After finding out customers’ shape, size, height, proportions and colouring, the Garmentology application delivers personalised recommendations of what styles and colours would best suit that person. It also recommends relevant products stocked by the retailer.
Shoppers looking for clothes recommendations from the Garmentology website can click through from the recommended clothes to complete their purchase with retail partners including Asos, Boden, John Lewis and Reiss.
Susanne Newman, co-founder of Garmentology, said: “Garmentology treats each user as an individual. It’s a personal way of connecting shoppers to the products they want. Each profile is built up to each individual standard and it remains individualized all the way through. It has even been described as the personal shopper online.”
Newman was previously an account director for a FTSE 100 IT company and went on to train as an image consultant. After taking out time to bring up her daughter, she launched Garmentology with co-founder Rob Macdonald.
Currently the application is designed for women customers but there are plans to extend it to men.
Newman added: “There is nothing worse than the feeling you get when you’ve just bought something gorgeous, but for whatever reason it doesn’t fit right or the style doesn’t flatter your figure. Garmentology is all about finding the right clothes and styles for your individual preferences and we hope retailers will see the value this could add to the online shopping experience.”
