Retail technology startup stories interview: Matthew Klimpke, Co-Founder and CEO, Vyking
RTIH gets the lowdown on Vyking, which recently launched an augmented reality Magic Mirror solution for in-store footwear shoppers.
RTIH: Tell us about yourself and Vyking
MK: Vyking an AR solutions provider for the fashion industry, transforming the customer experience through scalable virtual try-on.
But simply, we allow you to try on thousands of pairs of shoes virtually through your phone’s camera!
This week we also launched our first in-store or OOH solution, the Magic Mirror, which enables retailers to let their customers virtually try on shoes via an in-store display.
I was born and raised in the UK and studied abroad for one year as part of my undergraduate degree, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
After completing my Masters in Paris and Berlin, I decided to stay in Berlin and enter the startup world, which was 10 years ago now. We started Vyking in its earliest form seven years ago now and it’s been an incredible journey since.
RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?
MK: We have all been fascinated by augmented reality for many years now and took a lot of inspiration from Snapchat launching face lenses back in early 2015.
We built our own sponsored lens ad network, running similar sponsored lenses campaigns in mobile apps that integrated our face tracking technology.
We wanted to do something bolder though and after observing the activity in the try-on space for cosmetics and eyewear, with brands reporting significant increases in both product interaction and conversion rates, we started to think about whether it would be possible to track human feet for on-foot product visualisation, i.e. trying on shoes virtually in the same way.
So in 2018 we created a concept video and tagged all the brands and platforms we thought might be interested. Many of them quickly got in touch with us, wanting to test it.
For us, this was clear market validation so we then set out to build the first prototype - it took a while to get something customer ready but already in 2019 we had integrated our solution into the global adidas app as well as POIZON, the largest sneaker marketplace in China.
RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?
MK: We’re proud to say that we work with over 30 footwear retailers already including household names like adidas, Crocs, Under Armour and Timberland.
We can demonstrate real ROI in terms of conversion uplifts as high as 50% with a reduction in returns of 7% as well as higher levels of consumer engagement with brands and their products.
RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?
MK: One of the biggest challenges in building out the core product was creating the underlying dataset.
We had to collect thousands of images, with different angles, lighting, backgrounds to enable the AI perform in any potential try-on scenario.
This also included building out custom data annotation tools specifically for this purpose.
Ensuring that every picture is accurately annotated is a challenging and time-consuming task - we’re very fortunate to have a dedicated annotation team, constantly working on improving the integrity of our underlying datasets.
RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the omnichannel retail sector right now?
MK: The cost-of-living-crisis is making itself felt across all sectors of retail and industry and brands and retailers need to make smart strategic decisions about investment.
The e-commerce sector saw a huge boom during lockdown and the challenge is how to maintain that momentum as people return to the high street but potentially with less disposable income.
An omnichannel approach allows brands to capture potential consumers wherever they are and to replicate the best of on and offline experiences across channels.
I like to think VTO tech can help with purchase decisions via social commerce, web or mobile and be applied to OOH or in-store experiences too.
RTIH: What's the best question about your company or the market asked of you recently by a.) an investor and b.) a customer?
MK: From an investor, we’ve been asked what happens if Google/Apple release foot tracking as part of ARKit/ARCore.
If or when this happens and if the quality of the tracking is on-par with what we currently have, we would look to incorporate this into our existing product.
The Vyking platform offers far more than just the core VTO technology, particularly as we expand the functionality of Vyking Studio to also include asset creation.
The best question we’ve been getting from customers recently is around scaling 3D asset creation. We’re impressed with how our core customers have been able to scale up the number of models optimised for AR.
However, it still only represents a small portion of the footwear catalogue. In order to really scale the revenue uplift from 3D and VTO, scaling content creation quickly and affordably is key, which is where we’re focusing a lot of our current R&D effort.
RTIH: What can we expect to see from Vyking during 2023?
MK: We are rolling our technology out to thousands of products across the entire online fashion retail ecosystem, continuing to focus first and foremost on the footwear category.
The recent release of our Magic Mirror product will also see us having a strong in-store and OOH presence for the first time.
At the core, Vyking is a computer vision and machine learning company and we are building out our next product: creating 3D shoe models using generative AI, which will further enable our customers to scale the number of products that can be deployed for VTO.
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