If the shoe fits, wear it. Unless it doesn't fit, in which case if it was purchased online it has to get shipped back – a hassle for the customer and a huge cost for the industry.
“It seemed incredibly wasteful and a solvable problem,” says Matt Wilkinson, a co-founder and CEO of Shoefitr, a young Pittsburgh company, which invented a virtual shoe fitting application.
Shoefitr uses 3D scanning technology so that online shoppers can compare a shoe they want to buy with one they currently wear. Shoefitr will recommend the correct size with 95% accuracy.
Shoefitr's customers, including footwear e-retailers The Athlete's Foot, Saucony and Toms, along with large online sellers in Brazil and Australia, report as much as a 38% reduction in returns.
That has a huge appeal to the industry, which lost over $600 million in sales in 2008, when one of three shoes purchased online was returned. Virtual fitting also has potential to drive online shoe sales, Wilkinson adds, noting that despite the explosive growth in online shopping, 75% of customers are reluctant to shop for footwear on the Internet.
Shoefitr launched in 2010 out of Carnegie Mellon University. In 2011, the company moved from the Innovation Works' AlphaLab accelerator into its own space. That year, the company also attracted $1.2 million in venture capital.
Now Shoefitr, which has added about 20 customers in the last year, is expanding beyond athletic footwear into casual and women's designer shoes, says Wilkinson, and anticipates adding about five new positions in the next six months, bringing its workforce to 15.
Source: Matt Wilkinson, Shoefitr
Writer: Elise Vider
