Amidst an online shopping boom spurred by the pandemic, a Boston company is deploying its smartphone 3D body scanning technology to help consumers order the right size apparel.
NetVirta Inc., which has offices in Boston and Singapore, has partnered with the outdoor active footwear company Merrell, a Wolverine Worldwide brand. The company’s fit scanning technology will be used on the beta version of Merrell’s Shoe Advisor mobile app to help consumers find the correct size and fit for their shoes.
“Essentially we are converting two-dimensional pictures, or two-dimensional video streams, into an exact three-dimensional body model of the user,” said CEO Jeff Chen.
Chen and Andy Eow founded the company after completing their studies in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.
NetVirta’s first product was CurveCapture, a medical app cleared by the FDA in 2013 to 3D scan patients for custom-fit orthoses and prostheses. The company then moved into the consumer space in 2017, launching the Verifyt app to enable sports equipment providers to custom-fit gear to athletes. Chen said all the professional and college football teams use Verifyt to scan players' heads for custom-fit helmets.
The company was able to grow organically from product sales, Chen said, and has raised just $5 million in 2017.
NetVirta is now moving into the apparel industry with the first announcement of a footwear partnership. Chen said they have secured partnerships with nine publicly traded companies in the fashion industry, and this is their first announcement.
Verifyt walks users through the entire scanning process, Chen said. A voiceover tells them what to wear, where to stand and how to position their body. If the user isn’t following the poses provided by the app, it can give real-time feedback to correct them. Once the scans are done, it takes less than a minute for the app to create a 3D model. Merrell will have Verifyt integrated into its own app.
Chen said Verifyt is not an ecommerce platform. Its measurements and 3D scans integrate with a brand’s app or website to provide size recommendations on each product.
“We help them reduce returns. We help them to increase online conversions,” Chen said. “And then we also help them to scale up the customized apparel manufacturing.”
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Chen said the pandemic and its impact on online shopping pushed NetVirta to quickly move into the apparel industry. The company began talking with Merrell and Wolverine Worldwide last year.
“It’s one of the companies that I think the pandemic might have been one of the factors to move brands faster than other brands,” Chen said.
In addition to its benefits to companies and consumers, Chen said NetVirta also hopes to help the environment by reducing textile waste and the carbon footprint from shipping.
“Our track as a company is really, we want to change the world, making it a better place. That’s part of the reason we went into the medical space,” Chen said. “In the consumer space as well, we’re talking about changing this planet to a better planet.”
