Retailers dive deep into your closet for data
The first step for a shopper buying a suit at the fast-growing menswear retailer Indochino is sharing his personal information: A salesperson armed with an iPad measures nearly everything on his body, from the distance between his belly button and rear to the circumference of his knees.
The next step is getting a customized, made-to-measure suit delivered to his home within a few weeks. But his body data live on: Company executives are hoping to build a “master data model” that would connect his measurements with his advertising, shopping and spending histories.
Clothing companies now see body measurements as one of their most prized currencies, and millions of Americans are increasingly offering up their innermost personal data in search of customized pieces or a better fit.
Companies such as Indochino, Wantable and Stitch Fix, the latter of which counted nearly $1 billion in sales last year, gather dozens of data points on each customer, including weight, jobs and past pregnancies. They are being joined by Amazon.com, the online retail giant that counts fashion among its fastest-growing businesses and now sells a bedroom camera that offers opinions on what a user wears.
But the corporate harvest of data about our bodies, including our faces, voices and fingerprints, also is raising privacy concerns about how much sharing is too much in service of better-fitting clothes.
“These body measurements look a lot like medical records,” said Peter Swire, a law professor at the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business who coordinated with the White House in the 1990s during the shaping of the nation’s medical privacy law.
Those health privacy rules, Swire said, “would apply to this data if the measurements were taken at the hospital. It doesn’t apply when an online company puts them in an app.”
Companies value this data because it can lock customers in for life and make it easy to order customized clothes over the Internet without trying anything on. But some privacy experts question whether Americans have a clear idea of what they are handing over.
“There’s a little bit of a weirdness about it. You’re letting people into your life,” said Autumn Rocha, a 26-year-old student in Baltimore and Stitch Fix client.
A new Stitch Fix customer fills out a profile that compiles up to 85 data points. A woman is asked if she is a mother or currently pregnant, as well as her due date. She also hands over her dress, waist and bra size; her age, job and location; parts of the body she would like to flaunt or downplay; and answers to more-abstract questions, such as if she likes taking risks.
Algorithms use that data to pick through Stitch Fix’s inventory, referring options to a human “stylist” who decides on which to send. The customer pays to keep the clothes she likes and can send back anything she doesn’t. She can’t, however, go on the site and pick things out; her only choice is what the algorithms recommend.
The company says it can better assess style by having access to customers’ Pinterest and Instagram accounts, which many willingly share. Executives said others go a step further, sharing details of life milestones — new jobs, divorces, upcoming vacations and funerals — to define the clothes they are looking for.
Many of the new retailers say they don’t share or sell the size data they are collecting — it’s too much of a competitive edge. Stitch Fix said it employs an internal security team and says it protects its customers by removing some identifying information.
But privacy experts worry that the retailers eventually will sell the data, which could prove incredibly valuable to marketers and health insurers. Or the information could become the target of hackers. After all, passwords can be changed; body sizes can’t.