MARRYING BIG DATA WITH FASHION COMMERCE By Tuoc Luong INTRODUCTION Businesses are leveraging Big Data to grow consumer traffic and improve monetization. Like never before, businesses are collecting, processing and mining data to gain insights to improve consumer experiences through personalization and growing monetization through targeted advertising and recommendation of content and products. The focus of Big Data in businesses is almost entirely on the transactional commerce data or intent/interest/behavioral search and content consumption data. Everyone is leveraging Big Data in terms of what consumers are reading, watching, searching and buying. Now imagine if you could marry the transactional and behavioral consumer data with accurate body data of the individual consumer. Today, businesses collect and leverage demographic data such as age, gender, ethnicity, educational level and so on. But to date, nothing has been done to collect and leverage data effectively from the consumer s body. Imagine how personalized your content or product offerings could be if you knew your customer s body type, height, weight, chest, waist, inseam, neck circumference, across back shoulder width, calf circumference, thigh circumference, seat circumference, low and high hip elevations, etc what you could do if you knew every aspect of the physical body measurements of the individual consumer.
This is now possible through the Me-Ality Body Scan Technology from Unique Solutions! CURRENT FASHION APPAREL SHOPPING Let s look at the current consumer experience in shopping. Let s narrow it further by looking at fashion apparel shopping where knowledge of an individual s physical body is important to the experience. FIT is the Holy Grail for consumers in shopping for fashion apparels. The problem is that the fashion industry and brands do not help the consumer in determining a great fit. Rather than making it simple, the clothing manufacturers make the shopping experience more complex and frustrating. Sizing is not standard where one brand s size 2 is maybe another brand s size 4. Fashion brands design their clothes differently using proprietary style specifications since there is no industry wide standard in sizes. The consumer is left with a try many and hopefully one fits method of shopping. It is common for a shopper to take many pairs of jeans (different brands and different sizes of the same brand) into a store s fitting room to try on. The shopper comes out of the fitting room buying perhaps one pair of jeans or even frustrated that none of them fit. The online consumer experience is even worse. Many online shoppers buy multiple sizes hoping that one size fits and then having to return the other sizes (wasting time and expenses). Many people do not even shop for clothing online at all because of the fit problem and the hassle of returning goods. The results are bad consumer experiences, costly returns for online merchants and overall less revenue and margin for the merchants.
FUTURE FASHION APPAREL SHOPPING Now imagine a shopping experience where a consumer s physical body measurements are known and leveraged to match against the fashion brands clothing specifications - resulting in a perfect fit the very first time. Imagine further that your physical body measurements travel with you (in a secure way) to every offline retail store or online merchant web site you visit. Let s examine some possible scenarios: SCENARIO 1 Carol walks into a Bloomingdale s to buy a pair of jeans and is greeted by the Sales lady. Bloomingdale s Salesrep: How can I help you? Carol: I am interested in a new pair of jeans. Here is my Me-ID TM (Me-Ality ID). I m interested in Levi s but also want to try other brands that may fit me well. And I m not sure what to try. Bloomingdale s Salesrep: Thank you. The Me-Ality system suggests these are your best fit J Brand as well as some other brands that our system recommend base on your body type and measurements from your Me-ID. Carol is happy because all the clothing that she brought into the dressing room fit her well. She s not only getting the best fit Levi s Jeans she was looking for, but also discovers other brands, models and cuts that were recommended to her. A quick and effortless shopping experience. SCENARIO 2 Carol goes home that night and logs into Amazon.com looking at their new fashion apparel pages. She liked a couple of the dresses and adds them to her shopping cart without having to worry about dress sizes of the two different brands she liked. Amazon automatically populates her shopping cart with the right size 2 of brand X and size 4 of brand Y that she ordered - both are great fits for Carol based on her Me-ID, which Amazon knows about. PERSONALIZED FASHION APPAREL SHOPPING Better yet, Carol discovers that Amazon has a new personalized shopping fashion site where the entire site (all pages) is customized with only brands, models, cut and sizes that are a perfect fit for Carol and that are in inventory. The experience is awesome because all the clothing products presented are personalized with knowledge of Carol s body type and measurements. She can discover and browse only brands/models/cuts that fit her well and never have to worry about discovering later that the apparel she likes may not be available in her size or her size may not be in inventory. This is the future of fashion apparel shopping and is possible through the Me-Ality Perfect Fit Platform.
ME-ALITY PERFECT FIT PLATFORM We have all experienced going through the airport security booth where a TSA agent scans our body looking for potential weapons. The scan is quick, painless, non-invasive and safe using Millimeter Wave technology. Now imagine the same comprehensive body scan technology being leveraged for consumers benefit in their shopping experiences. SIZE-MATCHING BODY MEASUREMENT CALCULATION PROCESS CUSTOMER S BODY POINT COORDINATES CAPTURED & STORED COORDINATES USED DERIVE BODY 200,000+ Body Coordinates Mapped (FOG Files) KEY BODY DERIVED & STORED SIZE-MATCHING ENGINE Manufacturer s Style Specifications PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS & SIZING CODES CUSTOMER S Product (Style) Specifications Database Generate Size Recommendation Based on Best Fit Customer Measurement Database That s exactly what the Me-Ality Perfect Fit Platform by Unique Solutions does. A consumer steps into a scanning booth fully clothed, just like at the airport (note: a Me-Ality booth is similar in size and aesthetically more pleasing than a TSA airport booth) and the same safe Millimeter Wave technology is used to provide a full body scan in less than 10 seconds. We are currently negotiating with one of the world s largest Original Equipment Development Manufacturers ( ODM ) for development of handheld scanners. The resulting data (200,000 data points representing your physical body scan) is sent to the Me-Ality Perfect Fit Platform. The Me-Ality software analyses the 200K data points, extracts and transforms the data into usable body measurements. The body measurements are leveraged by the Me-Ality Size Matching Engine to match against the fashion brands style specifications using Me-Ality s proprietary algorithm including knowledge of the ratios between different areas of body measurements. This results in the best recommendation for fashion brands, models and size fit for your body! Me-Ality s proprietary matching algorithm takes into consideration many comprehensive measurements that are critical for a perfect fit but not necessarily something that can be measure by an individual per say.
For example, the ability to take the arms off is something that can t be done by human hands but trivial in body scan data. This not only allows Me-Ality s system to clearly define the arm creases (the exact point where the arms become the body), it allows Me-Ality s system to accurately measure the front and back portions of the armscye (the shape or outline of the arm hole) and the distance across the chest and back. The combination of these measurements is critical in determining the exact amount of fabric required to cover these areas and allow proper movement at the same time. A shirt can look great while an individual is standing up yet he/she cannot move the arms enough to drive in it, or it always pulls to the back. The balance of fabric in the garment needs to match the proportions of the body at those points and these measurements are nearly impossible to measure accurately by an untrained person who s not a tailor. But with body scanned data, these measurements can be derived easily and accurately. This is but one example. There are other measurements that are extremely difficult to take accurately and certainly impossible by an untrained individual. The Me-Ality system can derive these measurements with ease and accuracy - then leverages these measurements with the proprietary matching algorithm. Just as the Google Search Engine matches the relevant documents or web pages to the corresponding search query, the Me-Ality Size Matching Engine matches the relevant fashion apparel brands, models, cuts and sizes to the corresponding individual s comprehensive body measurements. Just as Google crawls the web for all documents, Me-Ality partners with all the fashion brands to get their clothing style specifications. Me-Ality further annotates this clothing style data with additional information and stores the content in its apparel database. Just as Google takes search queries as input, the Me-Ality Size Matching Engine takes in body measurements as input and its algorithm matches the relevant apparel in the database - resulting in a perfect fit for the consumer. After performing a body scan your body data points are kept secure and associated with your Me-ID (Me-Ality ID). From this point forward, you would only need to give your Me-ID to a Me-Ality enabled retailer or e-commerce web site. Of course, should your body change and you would like to update your body scan, you can do so at any time. FROM BODY SCAN TO PREDICTIVE MODEL This is all great if a consumer is able to easily access the Me-Ality Body Scan booth. What happens when the individual is not near a Me-Ality booth but would like to receive the same great fit benefit from the Me-Ality Size Matching Engine? By leveraging Big Data Science, Me-Ality has developed a solution (Predictive Model) for this scenario. Me-Ality started out placing many of its body scan booths in Shopping Malls across the USA where visitors simply stepped in one of the booths for 10 seconds and got their body scanned and received recommendations of apparel brands, models, cuts and sizes in the Mall stores that fit them well.
From there, Me-Ality signed up retail partners like Bloomingdale s where a co-branded body scan booth was placed in the store itself (in Bloomingdale s case initially in the New York flagship stores in the Jeans departments). Bloomingdale s customers are offered an opportunity to have a body scan and receive recommendations of jeans fitting their body well. BIG TRAINING DATA SET Over time, Me-Ality has amassed over one million unique body scans (and continues to add more and more each day). This is by far the largest repository of body scan information anywhere. Just as Google has amassed massive search data and leverages Machine Learning to make its search better, Me-Ality treats the million-plus body scans acquired over time as the training data set and leverages Machine Learning to build a Predictive Fit Model for an individual without the need for a full body scan!!! Think of Machine Learning as the building and examining of a software system that improves its performance from large amount of data. An easy example to help illustrate a Machine Learning is a system that can be trained to classify e-mail messages as spam or non-spam e-mails. The system can be trained on existing e-mail messages to distinguish between spam and non-spam e-mails. Then the system can be used to classify new e-mails as spam or non-spam. The larger the training data set it has access to learn, the more accurate its predictive capability becomes. In Me-Ality s situation, the system is using the million-plus body scans data as its training data. The system learns from the Big Data set all the correlations between different body measurements over different body types and ethnicities. Leveraging the Big Data training set, the Me-Ality system can provide a virtual body scan of the consumer (with respect to body measurements for apparel matching) if the merchant and/or consumer provides a little demographic and a few body measurements about the individual: Age, Gender, Ethnicity, Country, Height, Weight, Chest/Bust, Waist, Seat and Hip Position (Female only). The basic demographic info and user entered measurements are inputs into the Me-Ality Predictive Model. The Predictive Model derives and fills in all the missing required body measurements of the consumer.
BASIC DEMOGRAPHIC INFO & USER- ENTERED BODY MEASUREMENT CALCULATION PROCESS 1,000,000+ User Body Scan Data KEY BODY DERIVED & STORED SIZE-MATCHING ENGINE Manufacturer s Style Specifications PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS & SIZING CODES CUSTOMER S Product (Style) Specifications Database Generate Size Recommendation Based on Best Fit Customer Measurement Database This is possible because of the Big Data set from a million plus real body scans that Me-Ality has acquired over the years (and continues to acquire each day). By leveraging this Big Data set as training data for the algorithm to model and learn from, the Predictive Model can predict and derive other body measurements (with 95% accuracy) necessary to feed into its Size Matching Engine as if the individual was physically body scanned. It took a couple of years for Me-Ality to acquire the body scan of a million plus consumers across the United States. But now, the Predictive Model (made possible by the million plus body scan data set) will allow online merchants to have massive adoption in a short period and offer their customers perfect fit benefits as if they were body scanned.
BENEFITS FOR ONLINE MERCHANTS What do the Me-Ality Predictive Model and Size Matching Engine mean for online fashion business? The benefits are increased revenue and margin. This is possible due to three things: 1. Bring in new consumers to online fashion shopping for the first time 2. Increase sales conversion of existing online fashion shoppers 3. Reduce rate of returns from online fashion shoppers INCREASING THE MARKET SIZE It is estimated that over 25% of consumers do not shop for fashion online because they are not convinced that the apparel will fit and the frustrations that come with that. There is a strong consumers reluctance to buy clothes they cannot try on to ensure fit. Imagine the following frustrating scenario: being excited to buy a dress/shirt online eagerly waiting a few days to a week for the delivery opening the package to discover that the dress/shirt doesn t fit you wasting costly time repackaging the dress/shirt and go to the post office to return it feeling frustrated having to pay for the shipping fee Me-Ality can bring in new consumers to online fashion shopping by taking the fear of the above scenario away. With perfect fit of apparel and no need to return, more consumers will shop online - enlarging the revenue pie for online fashion merchants. Greater Sales Conversion Me-Ality enables a better user experience shopping for apparel online by enabling a perfect fit effortlessly. When people buy online, they want to do it fast and quick and not have to do a lot of work. The online merchant can make it quick and easy for the customer to find something that fits with the Me-Ality system. This raises the probability of the customer buying something on the site. In addition, the buying experience can be customized to a consumer s body so that she only sees apparel that fits her. This alleviates frustration at discovering later in the process that the apparel she likes doesn t have a size that fits her. By only seeing fashion that fits her, it also encourages a consumer to browse and discover new brands that fit. A better user experience enables increased sales conversion. Lower Rate of Returns An important metric for online retailers is rate of return - which is costly to the online
merchant in many ways: warehousing and restocking cost, shipping fees (free return offers) and not to mention that the lost value of return apparel. These items will likely be sold at a discount, especially if out of season. These are direct costs and impact the bottom line directly. On average, a 1% drop in the rate of return equates to 1% profit, studies have found. It is interesting to note that studies have shown online merchants offering free returns see a boost in Sales revenue. If online merchants are confident of the rate of return, free return is a strategy that they can employ to boost Sales revenue SUMMARY By leveraging sophisticated body scan technology, Big Training Data and sophisticated data science, the Me-Ality Perfect Fit Platform offers the future of online fashion shopping. The online merchants are given the tools to increase revenue and minimize cost while at the same time giving their online customers an easy and quick way of browsing, finding and buying clothes that fit them. ABOUT THE AUTHOR For 20+ years, Tuoc Luong has been a driving force in software engineering and technology solutions for the global market. He currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer for Shanda Online. Prior to joining Shanda Online, Tuoc served as the Global Senior Vice President of Yahoo from 2007-2010, where he led the Search Division and was responsible for Yahoo Search products worldwide. Before joining Yahoo, Tuoc held various management positions at Ask Jeeves Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation and several other Hi-Tech companies. He is a highly respected entrepreneur and leader, having established a tremendous track record of building engineering teams at multiple successful start-up companies in Silicon Valley. Tuoc holds a Master s degree in Engineering Management from Santa Clara University, a Bachelor s degree in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of Internationalization, Developing Software for the Global Market (published in 1995). Your personal fit expert. For more information, visit me-ality.com