:: Gunilla
Your virtual walk-in closet.
The path towards smarter shopping goes via your virtual wardrobe at Figurous. An online representation of your real wardrobe capable of showing you a world full of fashion your size, fit, style and colour from the very beginning. Similar in concept to Amazon’s book recommendations, Figurous offers the discovery of nearly custom-tailored clothing, for those of you who appreciate quality fashion that is ideally suited to your own style and taste—from elegant and chic to casual and relaxed.
When shopping for new clothes, you probably notice the barcode labels attached. Next time you buy new clothes, keep those barcode labels. And if missing, kindly ask the staff to jot down the barcode digits on a piece of paper for you.
After shopping, put your newly bought garment into your own virtual closet. This is easily done by just e-mailing the barcode digits to your virtual wardrobe at Figurous. Don’t worry. Figurous will know whether to put your virtual item on a hanger or in the top drawer.
That’s all there is to it. At Figurous, you will only use barcodes (well, altered jeans will also require measuring the length of the inseam) in order to fill your virtual closet. Before you know it, Figurous will have utilised the barcode digits to learn everything worth knowing about a piece of clothing, such as the look of it, brand name, style, size, colour, fabric… For you to keep and manage on your own. At no cost to you.
Re-finding your old favourites.
Over time, you’ll find out which pieces of clothing that are your favourites. At that time, Figurous will guide you towards the online or downtown shop that actually features other pieces of your favourite items. Perhaps you’re looking for the same piece in another colour? If your favourites are not sold any longer, Figurous guides you towards other similar well-fitting fashion pieces in future collections of your favourite brand names.
Finding new favourites.
Speaking of favourites. If you’re not only thinking the word “favourite” but also virtually earmark certain fashion items as being your favourites, you’ll enable a function similar to Amazon’s recommending you books that are like your preferred author’s. Only this time they’re specific to Figurous. “Since these clothes are your perfectly fitting favourites, you would love to wear these other clothes as well. And here is where you’ll find them…”
Swapping.
Figurous is not limited to guiding you towards online or downtown shops offering fashion custom-tailored to you. Whether you’re trying to locate old favourites all over again or wanting to find new favourites, Figurous also functions as the world’s greatest swap party. You’ll get anonymous access to other Figurous customers that have clothes that fit you right away. Figurous peers will anonymously find the clothes that actually didn’t fit you in the first place.
Bras, jeans, shoes and whatever.
There are a lucky few who can simply walk into any shop and always find clothing that fit them perfectly. Figurous is for the rest of us who don’t.
To start with, we’re focused on bras. Once again, Figurous asks you to perform the tedious task of finding a perfectly fitting bra for everyday use. Remember, a high quality everyday bra is a comfortable one, even after a long day or year of wearing it. That is why we recommend that you go to a shop specialising in underwear. Specialty shops feature professional staff who are experts at fitting you properly with the bra that ideally suits your particular body and shape.
Bras, jeans, shoes and whatever can be put into your virtual walk-in closet from the start. Even if bras are the basic garment from which you start building your virtual wardrobe, information about your jeans, shoes, etc. will also be stored safely by means of barcode digits until the day when these barcodes are transformed into usable information for you (links, images, etc.).
Build your virtual wardrobe now.
Figurous is ready to flick the switch to enable you to actually step into your virtual walk-in closet. But first, you’ll have to let Figurous know that you’re interested.
Request your free virtual wardrobe right away by sending us an empty e-mail message to GetMyVirtualWardrobe@figurous.com. Figurous will handle your request confidentially.
In exchange, when Figurous has received at least 99,992 additional e-mail requests (out of the original 100,000 needed) from around the world, you’ll get a few simple instructions on how to start placing your own fashion pieces into your virtual wardrobe as you continue to add new pieces.
Contact us.
Do you have a question or suggestion? Please send us an email message to info@figurous.com, or simply visit the Figurous group at Facebook.
Business facts about Figurous
Figurous is a public proposal for a next generation long tail Internet service. In the spirit of Google (general information search), Amazon (books), iTunes (music and film), Flickr (photo sharing) and heaps of other long tail Internet services, Figurous will become the long tail of personal fashion.
Without ever having to measure herself while at the same time remaining anonymous to others, the consumer will be able to specify all her clothing preferences by the clothes she already wears. By utilizing barcode digits (in the same way as Amazon uses ISBN numbers at its online bookshop) to identify every conceivable aspect of every single piece of clothing in terms of brand name, style, colour, size and fabric, Figurous guides consumers towards where they can buy, re-locate or swap their clothes from either a downtown or online shop or from a Figurous peer.
Free of charge to consumers and retailers, Figurous earns its money by charging brand name owners and clothing manufacturers. As consumers get the tools to easily locate perfectly fitting clothing of a brand they like, the cost to reach repeat customers precipitously drops.
The “unique selling point” of Figurous must be projected against the competition it faces:
- My Virtual Model is basically for promotional purposes only. Who believes that the limited selection of clothes that may be fitted on a virtual “self” will actually have the correct size, colour and shape in real life?
- Zafu relies heavily on people knowing how to measure and describe themselves and their favourite clothes--a difficult task to accomplish with any degree of precision. The problem of people measuring themselves correctly is described in this scientific article.
- Size Me Up claims that it is possible to advise consumers on the sizes to choose in buying new pieces of clothing. Size Me Up assumes that size charts are based on hard facts rather than apparel industry guesswork. Science has shed some light on how little size charts have to do with the actual size of a garment in this article.
In summary, Figurous is not based on body measurements or sizes, although sizes will be provided customers for informational purposes. Instead, the favourite size, colour, style and fit of each customer is implicitly encoded into the barcodes of all clothing. That is why Figurous will not only guide customers to the correct clothing sizes, but also to the favourite colours, styles, fit and fabrics. This is simply done by letting customers enter a few barcode digits and by leaving the rest of the work to Figurous. Compared to its competitors, the Figurous approach is unique and perfectly true to life.
Furthermore, by using Figurous, there is finally a chance of drastically reducing the alarming return rate of clothes when using e-commerce (12 - 35%). Figurous does away with the habit of customers to order multiple sizes of the same garment to deal with the sizing problem and then returning the ill-fitting pieces by means of unnecessary road transports.
There are of course companies like XXX that have a cynical perspective on returns. A senior XXX officer states that “Returns are good for us.” By returning ill-fitting clothes, customers give XXX the chance to sell more as they make return shop visits sooner than expected. Luckily, most of the rest of us believe that returns are bad business, no matter how you look at it.
© 2008, Figurous AB, Sweden