Q&A with WAIR Co-Founder/CEO Greg Moore

CEO Spotlight: WAIR co-founder and CEO Greg Moore answers apparel retailers' top 5 questions about size and fit.

Greg is the CEO and co-founder of WAIR and its parent company, Fit3D, Inc. Before WAIR, Greg was Director of Baseball Products at Sportvision, the leading provider of next-generation sports entertainment products and data solutions. 

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Why did you start WAIR?

 

We saw a hole in the way that apparel and fashion brands operate. After interviewing countless executives, we found that most brands do not have a clear understanding of the body dimensions of their shoppers.  

This leads to lost opportunities in profit as well as sustainability. The problem is in the hundreds of billions, and we knew we were the company to help fix it.

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How does WAIR help brands solve the problems you previously identified?

WAIR integrates directly into our brand partners' eCommerce stores and helps shoppers order their best-fitting products as simply as possible. We then use the body data captured during this process to help brands optimize pattern blocks and grade rules, inventory strategies, marketing campaigns, and more. This leads to higher profitability and sustainability.

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What happens after the shopper gets their size and fit recommendation?

Along with the shopper's order data, we capture predicted body dimensions, shopper location, and the marketing campaigns that brought the shopper to the store. We can also integrate returns and review data into the fold.

This mix of data helps us contextualize the shopper's journey with his/her body dimensions, which had been the missing component for decades in apparel eCommerce. Our analytics and reporting solutions help surface opportunities for improvement, and our tools and wisdom help us recommend optimal paths forward for our brand partners.

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That sounds like a lot of personal information. Is it secure?

Yep. Simply put, we do not store any personally identifiable data. We obfuscate all inputs so that they are just associated with a session and order id without ever being tied to an individual.

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So you're telling me that you can accurately predict a human's body dimensions from a few questions? How do you do that?

WAIR is a subsidiary of Fit3D, Inc. Fit3D is the world's largest 3D body scanning company, with thousands of 3D body scanners deployed worldwide and over 3,000,000 unique 3D body scans captured.

This anonymized and cleaned dataset serves as the foundation for WAIR services, and the IP built atop this dataset enables WAIR to have the most accurate body prediction algorithms available.

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How is WAIR more accurate than other companies that have tried this similar approach?

In a few words, WAIR has exclusive access to the world's largest dataset of human body dimensions and scans. This data and our ability to ask those who have scanned enriching survey questions is the foundation of our body prediction IP.  

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I've seen size and fit recommendation solutions in the eCommerce apparel space before. How is your approach different from theirs?

Because we can predict the body dimensions of each shopper, we can offer size and fit recommendations that are completely personalized. This allows our recommendations and recommendation process to be extremely simple and succinct, leading to higher conversions and confidence.

Others in this space require much more shopper information, request "other best fitting brands" while on a D2C site, or require a lot of "learning" to begin offering accurate recommendations. We work out of the box and keep shoppers focused on the current brand on which they are shopping.

Furthermore, we strongly believe that size recommendation is just the beginning of the journey. Helping brands use this information to improve is a completely untapped opportunity.

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Have you ever thought about using a mobile phone to capture images and then turn them into body data?

Yes. We actually have patents on that technology. It really comes down to the complications of getting shoppers to take full-body pictures of themselves. We found that shoppers are very unlikely to do this and that it is very challenging, if not impossible, to seamlessly integrate this experience into the shopper's journey.

So while it seems cool and futuristic, it actually fractures the shopping journey. We chose to move forward with our quiz-based approach. Our questions maximize shopper use and conversion.

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Can eCommerce apparel brands continue to afford the financial cost associated with returns, customer support, and discounted or unsold inventory?

The short answer is NO. Measures need to be taken now in order to offset the costs and create a sustainable business model. McKinsey recently published a report showing that eCommerce shopping has reached 10-year projections within three months due to the pandemic.

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Interested in learning more about WAIR? Schedule a demo here and be sure to follow us on Twitter, Instagram , LinkedIn, and Facebook for all your fashion content needs!

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