German developers create online changing room

Tuesday, January 3, 2012 - 09:51 by Mike Price

A growing number of fashion sites are trying to help their users work out whether clothes will fit before they purchase them via safe shopping online and a German firm is the latest to build a virtual changing room system.

While the sales of clothing online are relatively strong in the UK, it is still a minority activity and in the US just seven percent of fashion items sold are actually bought through an e-commerce site.

Research conducted at the University of Regensburg in Bavaria has found that 40 per cent of the clothes which are bought online eventually get returned because they do not fit, so there is certainly a market to exploit when it comes to offering users the unique chance to try clothes on, without actually having a physical changing room.

A pair of German graduate students have founded UPcload to address these needs and have already earned close to £170,000 in government grants and prize money, to help fund their start-up business, according to the Guardian.

At the core of UPcload's functionality is the ability to let users create a personal profile, which, essentially, works out their measurements based on pictures captured using a webcam. To help get the scale right, the user has to clasp a compact disk and wear skin-tight black clothing.

Once the UPcload passport is finalised with all of the shopper's details they can then visit sites which will have compatible widgets that allow them to work out whether or not a particular item of clothing will fit a specific consumer.

UPcload has combined forces with MimicMe, a company based in Holland, to turn these vital statistics into a virtual changing room where people can view how the clothes will fit, before they spend their cash via safe shopping online.