How Zalando uses AI to inspire fashion shoppers

In collaboration with Levi’s, Zalando is launching a new virtual fitting room that uses customers’ real body measurements to recommend the right fit. The retailer is also rolling out its AI assistant further.

More precise display

The new fitting room is available in fourteen European countries for a selection of Levi’s outerwear such as jackets, shirts and t-shirts, for women and men. For the first time, customers can create a 3D model based on their own measurements, allowing them to see even more precisely how the clothes fit on the body. Previously, the avatar was based on a statistical calculation, based on the customer’s height, weight and gender.

Zalando and Levi’s will test the fitting room for four weeks to further improve the technology. Since the first tests in 2022, more than 80,000 customers have already used the virtual fitting room. In fact, previous tests with jeans have already led to a reduction in returns by up to 40 %.

Building an ecosystem

At the same time, Zalando is also further rolling out other AI initiatives. Since the beginning of this month, the AI assistant has been available in all 25 markets where the platform operates, in local languages. That assistant helps customers with searches in the huge assortment. For example, you can ask “What can I wear to my father’s sixtieth birthday party in Barcelona in November?”: the assistant understands context, such as location, weather and occasion, to make targeted recommendations.

In addition, Zalando is bringing its Trend Spotter, which allows consumers to discover emerging fashion trends, to Amsterdam, London, Warsaw and Zurich. The feature was previously only available to Antwerp, Berlin and four other cities. It illustrates the fashion platform’s ambition to build a pan-European ecosystem for fashion and lifestyle e-commerce.

Three tipping points

“In 2008, when we launched, online fashion buying did not yet exist”, Fabio Baum points out. The General Manager Benelux & Nordics at Zalando added that “since then, we have seen major shifts. Mobile shopping, for example, is now the norm. I see three new tipping points. First, a shift in generations: we are now addressing a generation of ‘digital natives’. Second, a technological evolution: AI allows us to build tools that really solve shoppers’ problems – those problems were there 16 years ago, but the technology wasn’t there yet. Third, we are seeing a significant evolution in terms of sustainability rules.”

Reducing costly returns is not the only reason: fashion shoppers are looking for inspiration and Zalando wants to provide it. “Using an AI assistant to choose an outfit is much more fun than browsing through our huge catalogue. Such an intuitive conversation works much better than classic search filters. We are not developing this to engage in upselling”, Baum stresses: “The shopper is at the wheel. We are building these tools for our customers, not to solve our internal problems.”