Startup interview: Dave Sharma, CEO and Co-Founder, Perfitly
RTIH gets the lowdown on Perfitly’s augmented reality powered virtual fitting room solution.
RTIH: Tell us about Perfitly.
DS: Perfitly is an AR/VR/AI based size visualisation SaaS solution for e-commerce, helping solve two of the costliest problems in online apparel shopping; high returns and low conversion.
We recreate the in-store fitting room experience in the virtual space allowing online shoppers to 'try before they buy'.
Shoppers can create an accurate personal avatar of their body using a few photos, inputting their measurements, or answering a brief questionnaire.
The system then recommends the best size in the style of garment selected by the shopper from the retailer’s site and automatically shows the avatar wearing the garment.
The shopper can zoom, rotate, change colours, and size up or down to see how the garment looks, fits and drapes on them to determine their ideal personal fit and buy confidently.
Perfitly provides both short-term and long-term benefits for brands and retailers, starting with an immediate uplift in their bottom line through an increase in conversion and decrease in returns.
On average, brands using the solution have seen a jump in conversion from 4% to 7.2% and a decrease in returns from 28% to 10%.
Beyond this immediate impact, the solution provides brands with extensive data and analytics capabilities necessary in impacting future collections and inventory decisions, as well as beneficial impacts to sustainability.
RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?
DS: It’s a funny story. I was visiting my son in Syracuse and dozing off on a lazy Saturday afternoon, when a delivery truck stopped and disgorged a dozen boxes of shoes.
I took a dig at Deepali (my son’s partner) and asked if she was competing with Imelda Marcos. Her quick response was that she intended to keep only one pair, and “don’t worry, returns are free” but ended up returning all 12.
Suddenly, the light came on, and I saw that I was guilty of the same thing when I buy clothing online.
I hate waste in my personal and business life, so couldn’t get this out of my mind, and the more I researched, the more I realised what a colossal and pervasive waste it was.
Reaching into my operations and engineering background, Perfitly was born
RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?
DS: After the initial scepticism and “yeah we’ve heard this before, maybe a dozen times in the last year alone, nobody has been able to create a true virtual dressing room”, as we began telling our story and took them to our live deployments, doubts faded away.
The mega players who, in their word “have seen it all” seem to get it readily. As our deployments increase and actual performance data and the KPI’s have become evident, we are now creating a lot of excitement.
RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?
DS: As already discussed, getting over the initial scepticism.
Virtual dressing rooms have been promised many times before over the years, but nothing has delivered an end-to-end functionality that mimics a physical dressing room in full detail, function and performance; particularly, in regards to conversion and return rates.
Perfitly’s actual performance has narrowed the gap substantially in these two, critical metrics (returns down 64% on average and conversion up 80%).
Garment digital data is not universally available (getting better by the day, though). Perfitly, in reaction, has started offering a CONTINUUM service, which essentially allows a brand to ‘grow as you go’ depending on its data availability at a particular point in time.
So now, nobody is shut out but can start harvesting significant advantages of increased conversion and reduced returns from the get go.
RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the online retail sector right now?
DS: Without a doubt, sky-rocketing returns, low conversion rates and the very significant adverse impact on sustainability due to these two factors.
If you could tame the first two, it automatically has a major impact on sustainability and the carbon footprint. It establishes that profitability and sustainability don’t have to be trade-offs but can move in tandem.
RTIH: What can we expect to see from Perfitly over the next 12 months?
DS: It’s been both an unnerving, as well as an exciting last 12 months.
While we lost four of our installations and they are unlikely to come back in the pandemic’s aftermath, it has also energised a lot of action in our space, particularly on the part of large retailers and brands.
Not only has e-commerce itself leap-frogged ahead, experiencing three plus years of growth within the last year, many of the physical store innovations BOPIS (buy online pick up in store) and BOPIC (buy online pick up curbside) have the ‘buy online’ component in it.
Perfitly is central to apparel ‘buy online’; as a result we are experiencing a high volume of interest in our services.
We expect 2021 to be an exceptional growth year for Perfitly and hopefully we are able to capture two to three mega retailers both in the US and Europe. Several others are in the pipeline.
Data and analytics will start launching, and we expect to advance our photo avatar app to other industries.