> "Amazon.com is looking for a Women's Shoe Fit Model to try on our shoe selection and provide fit feedback to help our customers make the best purchasing decisions. The perfect Cinderella must have the perfect Size 8..."
If this works as advertised, it's a killer app for the on-line apparel industry.
I've had customers with consistent 60-70% return rates on footwear. It got so bad that customers would buy 3 sizes of the same shoe, planning to keep the best fitting pair and returning the other 2. They'd rather eat double shipping than go back and forth 2 or 3 times. The overhead from processing and restocking the returns consumed all their profit, but they had to keep the footwear to complete their product lines. This would have been great.
1. I have a perfect fitting shoe, I'd like to buy another perfect fitting shoe of a different brand.
2. I haven't found the perfect fitting shoe. I'd like to find one.
I assumed this would be solving problem #2, but it solves problem #1.
I thought I would tell it "I'm currently in shoe X, and it's the right length but chafes on the right side" or something of that nature, and it would tell me a better shoe.
This is actually pretty useful to a small but loyal group: runners. I know folks who run marathons and such, they are fanatical about the right fit and buy 3+ pairs when they find a good fit, because of rapid shoe model obsolescence/changes.
Perhaps with this small but profitable niche they can expand their technology into the mainstream for the likes of you and me.
I'm definitely going to suggest this site to my runner-friends and see what they think.
That sort of help-me-find should be pretty easily possible, it just hasn't been done yet. I'd assume it will come out eventually.
What this solves is that buying shoes online is a total crap-shoot unless you're buying something you've already tried on. It's even worse than buying pants, where waists can vary by several inches off their stated inches. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion/pants-size-chart-0...
The other tricky bit is that the perfect fitting shoe has to be a current model that they have already scanned. And hopefully it fit perfectly when it was bought, not when it was worn in.
This pain point is one of the reasons I do not buy pants or shoes online.
This is amazing execution of the idea, and I hope they get bought out for the millions they deserve! Or, if they'd prefer to grow it organically, that too!
They have a fantastic product. I was extremely impressed with how well it worked. To top it off, Matt seemed like a really great guy when I interviewed him.
I would consider buying a new pair of shoes today through these guys if they supported more than running shoes.
That said, what stops someone getting the size recommendation through ShoeFitr and then comparison shopping for the actual shoes? I don't think this stops them being valuable to Amazon, but it does seem like a weakness if they're independent.
Why is this dropping off the frontpage so fast? It's way uncharacteristically down. Is there some kind of hidden penalty at play? It's not spam, and has 50 points in 53 minutes, losing to posts with way less than that...
This data seems to be based on reviews, and reviewers are typically morons that know nothing about shoes. I order by size, ignoring the reviews, and I've only had one pair of shoes from Zappos not fit well.
I saw these guys present at SuperConf.net and what a fantastic idea backed by "patent pending" 3d imaging. Amazing stuff and someone is going to grab them quick for an easy 30 to 50 million.
I'm good friends with the ShoeFitr dudes, they're good guys. They have some serious tech, high reliability web stuff, and they even put up with it being in .NET!
The problem is that the different dimensions to the products dont actually exist. Getting those measurements would come at a great cost. The question is would it be cheaper than shipping returns?
Another question- China has industrialized- the next step is dealing in information. When will the suppliers realize they are losing out on a lot of money by not doing the photography and measurement at the factory?
Cool idea to go along side would be an iPad app, which allows you to compare your actual foot to inside of the shoe. From the bottom, from the side, etc. Would also work for gloves.
EDIT: Hell, you even show it on a regular LCD screen. Or allow the user to print it out to compare.
I imagine the problem is that shoes are real things with 3 dimensions, and feet change shape when they're compressed... neither of which are addressed by a printout (sure a printout is better than nothing, but if it's not predictive enough it's not worth the trouble).
If a device could model what kind of shoe you should wear based on an interactive iPad foot print, that would be amazing tech.
Wow the German site asks you to measure your foot with a paper, pencil and a ruler. Although ShoeFitr must already have your shoe in their database, the huge win is there's nothing asked of the user besides what shoe they already like and you can find it from brand name and colors.
Genius idea! I always take a stab at sizing online (I think men's foot sizes are more flexible than women's), but I still don't know if I'm a 10, a 10.5, or an 11!
[+] [-] oniTony|15 years ago|reply
http://www.amazon.com/Careers-University-Recruiting/b/ref=gw...
Search for: 133938 (reference code)
> "Amazon.com is looking for a Women's Shoe Fit Model to try on our shoe selection and provide fit feedback to help our customers make the best purchasing decisions. The perfect Cinderella must have the perfect Size 8..."
[+] [-] kmfrk|15 years ago|reply
I see what you did there.
[+] [-] edw519|15 years ago|reply
I've had customers with consistent 60-70% return rates on footwear. It got so bad that customers would buy 3 sizes of the same shoe, planning to keep the best fitting pair and returning the other 2. They'd rather eat double shipping than go back and forth 2 or 3 times. The overhead from processing and restocking the returns consumed all their profit, but they had to keep the footwear to complete their product lines. This would have been great.
[+] [-] gfunk911|15 years ago|reply
Potential use cases
1. I have a perfect fitting shoe, I'd like to buy another perfect fitting shoe of a different brand.
2. I haven't found the perfect fitting shoe. I'd like to find one.
I assumed this would be solving problem #2, but it solves problem #1.
I thought I would tell it "I'm currently in shoe X, and it's the right length but chafes on the right side" or something of that nature, and it would tell me a better shoe.
[+] [-] r00fus|15 years ago|reply
Perhaps with this small but profitable niche they can expand their technology into the mainstream for the likes of you and me.
I'm definitely going to suggest this site to my runner-friends and see what they think.
[+] [-] Groxx|15 years ago|reply
What this solves is that buying shoes online is a total crap-shoot unless you're buying something you've already tried on. It's even worse than buying pants, where waists can vary by several inches off their stated inches. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion/pants-size-chart-0...
[+] [-] smackfu|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjarratt|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffumarola|15 years ago|reply
This is amazing execution of the idea, and I hope they get bought out for the millions they deserve! Or, if they'd prefer to grow it organically, that too!
[+] [-] g0atbutt|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endtime|15 years ago|reply
That said, what stops someone getting the size recommendation through ShoeFitr and then comparison shopping for the actual shoes? I don't think this stops them being valuable to Amazon, but it does seem like a weakness if they're independent.
[+] [-] qeorge|15 years ago|reply
The execution looks amazing. I can't wait for this to be ubiquitous.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1673722
[+] [-] frisco|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] g0atbutt|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smackfu|15 years ago|reply
Zappos (who Amazon owns) does show whether shoes fit true to size or whether to size up. Is this really that much better?
[+] [-] jrockway|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bwb|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steveklabnik|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] latj|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zmitri|15 years ago|reply
EDIT: Hell, you even show it on a regular LCD screen. Or allow the user to print it out to compare.
[+] [-] r00fus|15 years ago|reply
If a device could model what kind of shoe you should wear based on an interactive iPad foot print, that would be amazing tech.
[+] [-] cschwarm|15 years ago|reply
http://www.mirapodo.de/groessen-kompass
I've been working on a similar concept for dress shoes.
http://sizeadvisors.com/
[+] [-] JeremyHerrman|15 years ago|reply
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