Fit Analytics: Helping the Earth One Order at a Time

The ML-powered sizing solution behind Asos, Zara and Boohoo argues that reducing size sampling and returns is making a sizable impact on the environment.

Solve sizing — and help the environment. Founded in 2010 in Germany by chief executive officer and founder Sebastian Schulze, Fit Analytics uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to power its platform and “solve sizing” for its clients, which includes fast-fashion retailers such as Asos, Zara and Boohoo, as well as contemporary brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss and others.

Gaining traction among conscious consumers, the apparel industry's impact on the environment is no longer swept under the rug. As retailers and brands are affixing fit solution technology into their strategies to solve sizing, the undue benefit may be solving returns.

“While only a fragment of the entire production chain is comprised of the final steps of customer orders and returns, it does take its toll on our environment and natural resources — and this is something we are happy to have a positive impact on with our sizing platform,” Schulze said to WWD. By reducing size sampling — when a customer orders more than one size of an item, returning the rest — and returns, the effect on the environment is minimized by default.

The Fit Analytics sizing platform combines what the company touts as, “the world's largest database of garment and fit information,” with more than $120 billion in global sales. Machine learning powers the data-rich platform, which clients use to inform improvements “from manufacturing to marketing,” in the words of Schulze.

“By putting machine learning at the heart of apparel operations,” Schulze said clients receive benefits such as e-commerce uplift and a long-term, strategic customer intelligence advantage that ultimately affects the bottom line.

The platform combines deep body modeling expertise, production size charts and a comprehensive collection of retail sales and returns records to produce its sizing recommendations. Its competitive distinction is knowledge, according to Schulze, who said Fit Analytics offers a better understanding of customers' unique body shapes and their personal preferences around fit.

“We work with the awareness that every return we prevent offsets the cumulative environmental strain of logistics in the apparel industry,” reiterated Schulze.

Already bolstering an impressive amount of fit coverage for apparel, Fit Finder is Fit Analytics' intuitive size adviser, which delivers more than half a billion sizing recommendations each month, “with an ever-growing coverage of over 15 million items and 17,000 brands,” Schulze said. Since then, Fit Finder's product suite has expanded.

Later this summer, Fit Analytics will launch “Fit Search” to enhance the shopping experience with better sizing and style personalization integrated as part of its Fit Connect product suite.