2012 07 virtual rooms

Virtual dressing rooms changing the shape of clothes shopping
23 July 2012, By Andrea Chang
At the Westfield Culver City (Calif.) mall, jeans shopper Stephanie Heredia stepped into a booth resembling an airport body scanner. In less than
20 seconds, she walked away with a printout that recommended a dozen denim styles to fit her hourglass-shaped frame.
Paper in hand, she headed to JCPenney to try on a pair of size 12 boot-cut Levi's. The fit was perfect. And the best part was no shimmying in and out of a stack of styles and sizes to get it.
"Whenever I go shopping for jeans, I have a heck of a time," said Heredia, 50, a jewelry sales manager from Culver City. "This is something new, more exciting. My son even did it, and he was impressed." New technology is making it easier than ever to find clothes that fit and flatter. Size-matching machines are springing up in shopping centers around the country. Free to shoppers, the service means less dressing room drama for customers like Heredia - and the promise of bigger profits for the industry.
Clothing makers, armed with body data collected from real shoppers, could sew better-fitting garments and more accurately forecast what sizes to stock. Retailers would save on labor needed to fold and rehang rejected garments. Some are already seeing its potential as a marketing tool.
During a March test of a body scanner aimed at helping shoppers find the right pair of jeans, denim purchases shot up at a Bloomingdale's store in Los
Angeles' Culver City area, company spokeswoman
Marissa Vitagliano said.
Sizing machines are "a great example of using technology to drive sales," she said. "It's certainly

the wave of the future and we want to be part of that." The technology could also help eliminate one of the biggest drawbacks to Internet shopping: returns. More than 20 percent of apparel ordered online gets sent back. Sizing software being developed for home motion-sensing devices like the popular Microsoft Kinect will soon allow