Why Sizing Needs a Global Revolution
[Quelle: whichPLM]
“We are all equal in the fact that we are all different.” – C. Joybell
With this joy to individualism, Joybell also states, without meaning, an everlasting threat of the fashion industry: people all over the globe come in different, ever-changing body shapes – something we all know too well. Current industrial sizing systems are inefficient and not up-to-date when it comes to covering these sizes in an efficient way.
Problems like the negative ecological footprint in fashion, huge numbers of returns in e-commerce and inefficiency in the product lifecycle are connected to the fact that our current sizing and fitting systems are old and weak.
These weaknesses should have no room in the digital time we live in, where the aim for efficiency and sustainability is a critical one. To grasp them at their roots, an automatized, smart clustered global sizing system for the industrial fashion production, in addition to a digital buying process for end consumers, is what we believe in.
Global industrial standardized sizing system
Right now, the state of sizing is pure confusion for manufacturers, sellers and buyers. Charts are old and for some countries not even available.
Systems are not standardized and every company has its own individual size concept; sometimes for strategic marketing purposes, often simply because it has always been “made that way”. But that’s why fashion buyers have to build up a lot of knowledge to find suitable fashion. And although there are so many different size tables in the companies, there is only an unsatisfactory variety of sizes for buyers. That’s something more and more people don’t want to accept anymore.
We believe a revolution in the process of producing and the act of buying fashion is much needed. Through the first global comprehensive dataset of human body measurements which is always up-to-date, we are creating smart clustered sizing systems that help the industry to produce efficiently on a global scale and as sustainable as never before.
This digital knowledge will help in many places of the value chain: from working with realistic measurements of digital models in product development, over hyper segmenting target customers regarding their sizing and demopraphics, to adding a digital measurement process prior to check-out for the customer to find their true size.
Device independent application / machine learning / neural networks
Digital measurement and reconstruction of human bodies has already been on the market for a while, mostly in the form of 3D Body Boxes. The advantages of this technology are their precision and speed. Yet, as anyone who’s used it knows, the user acceptance, size of the scanner, price and non-portability are big disadvantages.
It is therefore imperative to perform the entire scanning process on portable devices without the need for special hardware. Product and research work should be aimed at bringing the most accurate digital measurement process of the human body to any mobile device there is.
Digital measurement solutions should improve artificial intelligence to create an automated sizing process. So your customers can scan themselves exactly where they want to shop and see their true size in one scan anywhere.
Sizing in PLM systems: scan applications and automated processes
So, what do we see as the advantages of an automated and digitized sizing process in the industrial value chain?
Reduction of returns:
Just imagine a story where a user wants to buy a pair of jeans online. Before choosing the size, he can measure himself digitally and find out what size and fit is recommended for his body. It is now easy to just order a pair and maybe even get a discount for it. As we all know – returns otherwise cost €10 per item!
He can also be sure that this one true size will fit anywhere, because this size is a globally used size by anticipating fashion companies that are striving for the better. It is no longer necessary to buy different sizes to try them on.
Find real target groups and real sizes:
These digital scans help companies to get to know their actual target group better. Who really buys and where? What sizes do they have and what fit do they want?
In addition to intelligent clustered global sizing, this now helps to produce the right sizes for the right audience. Whether it’s introducing a new collection to a new target group, sharpening the target group or even expanding into new markets, time and money resources can be greatly saved with digital tools in the sizing value chain.
Hypersegmented sizing and efficient allocation process:
The deep understanding of data leads to the possibility of hypersegmentation of production in a far more efficient than ever before. Demographics, geography, income, social life etc. should merge with the size and body shape of the target groups and help to get to the point perfectly in every PLM.
A higher efficiency in production as well as a better understanding of the global quantity and allocation of the produced sizes is the goal, which ultimately leads to savings in cost, waste and CO2.
[TrueSize believe that these processes should be accessible to everyone, regardless of the size of the company. That’s why they’re looking for members who want to join the revolution of sizing in fashion to jointly benefit from a better global sizing value chain.]
