BodiData Inc. was founded in 2016 to target a problem: the pains of retail returns.
Today, its founders, St. Petersburg-based Bruce Terry and Saratoga, California-based Tuoc Luong, have evolved the idea into a software service platform called BodiData. The startup has since launched with uniform retail locations in Europe and raised additional operating capital in recent years. Terry, president and co-founder, told Tampa Bay Inno that its technology matches people with the right clothing fit to limit returns.
"BodiData was created out of a desire to attack the returns and attack the environmental issues associated with them," Terry said.
Billions of dollars are lost for companies that accept returns, Terry said. Then, products are often sent to the garbage, damaging the environment and emitting excess greenhouse gases in their transportation or destruction, he said.
"We built a team, we built a product ... then you have to build the interfaces, then we started the business development, focused on the uniform industry because we were of the opinion that the uniform industry had a very obvious illness in terms of returns, and we had a pill," Terry said.
The startup raised an additional $2 million in February and has raised more than $18 million since its founding in 2016, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The money so far has been early-stage operating capital and is entirely from friends and family, Terry said.
BodiData's central product is the software-as-a-service offered through its body scanner, the Kora V3. The scanner attaches to a tablet and gathers an exact 3D scan of an individual's body measurements without removing their clothes, Terry said. The technology is enabled through global hardware and software patents and a combination of optical scanning, depth sensing and radar, he said.
It doesn't collect facial features and takes measures to maintain users' privacy and ownership over their body's data, Terry said. The devices are free for customers, but BodiData charges a fee to use the product, he said.
Terry has a finance background and was previously the CFO at Canadian supermarket chain Sobeys. He's held leadership positions at Canadian insurance firm March Canada Limited and Canadian food company McCain Foods, according to his LinkedIn. Luong was a senior vice president at California tech firm Yahoo and oversaw worldwide search, according to his LinkedIn.
"He understood data, I understood fashion and the other stuff, and we both understood the dimensions of the problem," Terry said.
The company has 22 remote employees across Vietnam, the U.S. and Belgium, he said. It has office space in Pennsylvania and Vietnam but considers its main operations as Saratoga and St. Petersburg, he said.
The startup is working on expanding further internationally and finding more customers, Terry said. Now, with the recent capital from friends and family, the company is looking at its next step, he said.
"When you're a startup, and you haven't started generating positive cash flow yet, you constantly have to raise new money for working capital, so [the latest round] is really simply a working capital round," Terry said. "... In all likelihood, our next round will be our first Series A financing with an institution of some form."
