Tallinn: Fashion fans have one more reason to swap brick-and-mortar shops for online retailers: a company in tech-savvy Estonia has come up with a way to let you try on new clothes on your own computer.
The Fits.me company aims to end the guessing game about size and spare online shops heaps of returned goods thanks to shape-shifting robotic mannequins — which can grow from slim to muscular in moments — combined with a technology invented by Estonian universities.
"When I wanted to buy clothes online a few years ago, it took time to figure out at Timberland my size is S, at Lacoste and Levi it's M, but at Abercrombie and Fitch I am XXL," said Heikki Haldre, its co-founder.
"Our robots and the Virtual Fitting Room technology have solved the main problem that online clothing retailers face — the lack of a fitting room," added the 36-year-old.
The technology created by two Estonian universities allows online shoppers to enter their body measurements to instantly see how snug an S size would be for them, or how loosely an XXL shirt would fit them.
What makes this possible is the data from Fits.me, which tests garments on the variable robotic mannequins to map how a particular brand's clothes would look on people of different dimensions.
The robots can take on about 100,000 different body shapes, though only about 2,000 are being used for commercial purposes.
