A pairing of computer vision technology and measurement data is helping ThirdLove to expand over the border.
The San Francisco-based intimates ecommerce startup known for half sizes and a mobile sizing app that relies on iPhone images to determine fit as begun fulfilling orders from Canada, where it has “tens of thousands” of women on a wait list, said co-founder Heidi Zak.
It’s not the only sign of expansion. Launching in late 2013 with a handful of bra styles in sizes A to C, the company now puts member growth at 18 percent month-over-month, an increase that’s helped justify the collection’s climb to 11 styles in sizes AAA to G, including the recent addition of wireless, convertible and adjustable push-up options at price points on par with those of market leader Victoria’s Secret. Retail prices are $39 to $68.
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“It’s about the design and making it smarter to solve the common fit issues,” said director of design Ra’el Cohen, who incorporates details such as tag-free construction, extra hooks and padded closures for added comfort and functionality.
In recent weeks, the team, which hovers around 12 people, vacated its office near San Francisco’s tech-heavy South Park neighborhood for twice as much space in the up-and-coming Dogpatch’s American Industrial Center building. New showroom hours are available for in-person shopping, and a gift concierge tool created with Valentine’s Day in mind encourages women to submit wish list items that can be shared with significant others.
But it’s the convenience of anytime, anywhere bra fitting and accuracy that the company says is more precise than measuring manually that are the cornerstones of ThirdLove’s business.
“We have the input of the real measurements going into the design, and then we’re fit testing on real women. There are very few brands that do that,” said Zak, who was on Google’s marketing team and in business development for Aéropostale before starting the company with husband David Spector, who hails from Sequoia Capital and Google’s commerce team before that.
Those measurements come to ThirdLove via computer vision technology made possible with its iPhone app, which instructs users on how to position their smartphone cameras and frame their tank-top clad torsos in just the right way for accurate bra sizing. With the help of a proprietary algorithm, customers get bra size recommendations based on their measurements, and the company gets data points for its ever-increasing body of information about the female form.
That storehouse of measurement data helps ThirdLove develop product specifications based on a variety of real bodies, rather than the fit models upon which the industry has long relied.
The approach, which ThirdLove aims to trademark under the name Smart Specs, allows the company to grade sizes using data culled from individuals, as opposed to averages based on a standard size perfected on a fit model.
It’s also technology that would have been impossible even five years ago, before smartphones had the sensors and memory capable of capturing the data at the heart of the startup’s business model. At the same time, pervasive trends such as decreasing startup costs for online businesses, a plethora of free marketing tools and widespread smartphone adoption are fueling growth in the U.S. online lingerie industry, which is expected to reach nearly $16 billion in sales in 2019 from an estimated $7.6 billion in 2014, according to market researcher TechNavio.
With market leaders from Victoria’s Secret to Calvin Klein devoting resources to ecommerce, startups such as ThirdLove face the challenge of convincing customers to try a new, unfamiliar brand so it can build a loyal customer base for its products — an endeavor that TechNavio analysts say requires promotions, discounts and giveaways that eat away at profits.
It’s typical to find that “margins are taking a toll at times, especially in the beginning phases,” TechNavio lead analyst Sriram Mohan said of online lingerie startups in the U.S.
Rather than licensing its technology, which Zak says isn’t part of her current plan, the answer to endless price promotion is continued reach — and not only of the geographical kind.
“I think it makes a lot of sense for them to go outside of intimates and into other categories,” said Jon Sakoda, general partner at Menlo Park venture capital firm NEA, a leader in the $5.6 million funding round ThirdLove has raised from sources that also include Felicis Ventures, Andreesen Horowitz, XG Ventures, Yuri Milner, Munjal Shah and the artist NAS.
It’s a move the company has considered. They’ve experimented with foot scanning, and both Zak and Sakoda hint that swimwear is a likely next step.
According to Sakoda: “They have to eventually become a mass market product — scaling up their operations is going to be their greatest challenge, and it’s a challenge that almost all startups face.”