Fitting Reality Uses AR to Provide Retail Therapy in Your Living Room, Serves as A Personal Shopping Assistant

We're running a few blog posts over the next week to celebrate the BizSpark EU Summit being hosted in the UK.

Fitting Reality, one of the contestants from Russia, uses augmented reality to help women and men find clothes that fit them, in the styles they want. You can follow them on Twitter @FittingReality.     

Fast Facts                                                                              

            Founded: June 2011                                                   

            Status: Launching June 2012

            Funding: angel investment, seeking more

            Find at: Fitting Reality, and on their Facebook page. 

But the video of this is really cool and worth watching.  Wave your arms around the air and pick out dresses you would like to wear out to dinner. 

A virtual fitting room that finds the clothes that fit and suits you – and are available!

The big idea

Fitting Reality’s own market research sums up what shoppers want: they want to know what fits them and what suits them.  We’ve all that had experience of buying something online to only find that when it arrives, it does not look the way we had hoped.  While there are other attempts at virtual fitting rooms around, Fitting Reality’s VIPodium is the first that addresses both those questions, while also making it very easy for both online retailers to offer this augmented-reality based service.  Online customers will be able to sort through literally thousands of garments using Fitting Reality.  There is also an offline version being launched for in-store use.

To start using the system, a person creates his own personal profile ShapeID. It takes less than 5 minutes and only needs to be done once. After the measuring process done with Kinect, the customer can save these dimensions and then use these data every time he/she shops.

Fitting Reality’s expert system then connects to the retailer’s inventory to find and suggest only those pieces of clothing that actually fit the customer.  These are then ‘tried on’ by the user, who can even move around and the item will follow.  Both in-store systems and a home system (which connects to the customer’s own Kinect) are available and a mobile app is planned too.  With launch planned for summer 2012, the initial target markets are Europe and the US.

The team

Founder, CEO and the public face of Fitting Reality is Inga Nakhmnason, who previously founded AR Door, another augmented reality company, following stints at Publicis Modern and RBS-Soft, where she honed her abilities to run major projects.  The team of 23 employees, mainly focused on R&D, are based in Moscow.  The company is angel-funded.

The technology

Fitting Reality uses Microsoft Kinect technology and the mobile application will be released for Windows Phone.  The company also intends to move to the cloud.  Says Inga Nakhmanson, CEO, “Cloud is the only option for the future.”  She continues, “We’ve had a wonderful experience working with Microsoft, particularly from the local team in Russia.”  Fitting Reality is a BizSpark One company.