Finding clothes that fit is a struggle for those who shop online. Ukraine-founded technology firm 3DLook has created a mobile app to solve this problem and recently raised $6.5 to develop it further.
The money came from international investment funds Almaz Capital, TMT Investments and Zubr Capital. With it, the company wants to hire new staff and open research and development centers in Europe and the United States, its cofounder Vadim Rogovskiy wrote on March 16 on Facebook.
The 3DLook app allows users to measure their bodies with a smartphone. To do that, 3DLook analyzes two life-size photos of a person using the technology called computer vision also adopted by Snapchat, Apple and Facebook.
The app estimates the arm and leg lengths, waistline and hip size of a person, helping сustomers find the right size of clothing online.
The retailers that use the app benefit too — their customers return clothes less often, while the data about their bodies helps businesses design better clothes, according to Rogovskiy.
Nearly 100 global retailers are already using Rogovskiy’s tech. Among them are U.S. Denim 1822 that sells jeans, Fechheimer Brothers that sells uniforms, Red Thread that sells clothing for women and Tailored Brands that sell men’s apparel.
Tailored Brands said that, during the pandemic, it is safer to measure bodies for clothing sizes with an app on an iPad rather than ask customers to come to the store.
“We rolled out 3DLook’s solution in 100 stores and quickly expanded as we saw great success and positive feedback,” Chaitanya Pallapothula, senior vice president at Tailored Brands, told Forbes.
The reason why the company has become so popular is that it offers a simple tech that is not “burdensome for clients to use,” according to Pasha Bogdanov, general partner of Almaz Capital.
To use the technology, retailers should add 3DLook’s widget to their own app or website and ask customers to upload two photos taken by any smartphone.
The demand for 3DLook’s app has skyrocketed during the pandemic, Rogovskiy said. The company’s revenue has increased by 5.6 times since April, reaching $1 million in 2020.
Apart from the recent $6.5 investment, the company attracted money from big-name investors like Boost VC, 500 Startups, ICU Ventures, U Ventures (part of Horizon Capital) and supermodel Natalia Vodianova.
Overall, the company has attracted $11.2 million in investment. Rogovskiy estimates that today his business is worth $50-70 million.
3DLook employs 80 people, most of them work in Kyiv and Odesa, and the company is still hiring.
In the future, Rogovskiy wants his customers to be able to try on clothes online, using the augmented reality technology.
He isn’t afraid that the demand for his service will plummet when the pandemic ends — the quarantine has only sped up the trend of buying more clothes online, Rogovskiy said.
Besides, 3DLook can use its technology in other industries too. For example, to make customized automobile seats, to show how the human body changes after the workout or to create personal avatars for video games.
