Fashion is an integral part of everyone’s life. Be it what you choose to wear, style your hair, phrases you choose or even the type of food you eat. It is easy to spot fashion, as it is almost following the seasons -winter, spring, summer and fall. You cannot ignore when a new trend is happening, as you walk by shop windows and see the display changes.

However, fashion is faster than the season’s change! Typically the Fall/Winter Fashion Week is held in February, showcasing trends for the upcoming winter. While the Spring/Summer Fashion Week is held in September, displaying trends for the upcoming spring. So you are continually conditioned some way or other to change or update the way you look.

With Christmas around the corner, we see promotion after promotion in both online and retail shops with the season’s offerings. Consumer are spoil for choice and purchases often tends to be price-driven rather than quality.

Be wiser about where and what you shop.

Why is it important to be conscious about what you buy and wear? Here is a few reminders about the fast- fashion industry:

• The volume of water consumed by apparel production each year is currently the equivalent to 32 million Olympic swimming pools. Did you know that 780 mill. people worldwide do not have access to an improved water source?
• The wages of workers in a garment factories can be as low as US$ 3 a day.
• Clothes made from synthetic fiber such as polyester can take up 200 years to break down.

The list continues and you can read them on The Green Hub website.

Now that we know a few ugly truths, can we do something about it? Yes, we absolutely can! We can be mindful of what your next fashion purchase is.

We spoke to the owner of IMARIT- a mindful luxury knitwear based in Copenhagen, Ms. Mayra Navaratte. As an independent fashion brand owner focusing on social impact and sustainability, Mayra focuses on quality and opt for natural fiber in her knitwear lines. We talked freely on our ideas how we can do our part — no matter how small to preserve our planet and still keep our fashion-style.

We started talking about ethical consumption and responsible consumerism. Why is there over-consumption when it comes to fashion?

Mayra pointed one contributing factor from her observation:

Social acceptance

We all want to fit-in and be socially accepted #fomo. To a certain degree, the rise of the use of social media have led to over-consumption. We want to be followed, as we associate with being socially accepted and sometimes its achieved through our “dress-of-the day” #dotd posts or similar.

“Pressure for social acceptance drives unnecessary consumption”, she added.

A fashion victim

According to Wikipedia, Oscar de la renta first coined the term fashion victim. It implies someone who are vulnerable to faddishness and materialism. And according to Versace, “When someone alters their look too much from season to season, they becomes a fashion victim”

Bold statement, but we have to agree. We all want the style and look, but not willing or able to pay for the price. So, we go to discount shops be it online or the high-street to buy the look. Most often these items are produced in the conditions that we listed earlier — through underpaid labor and made with non-biodegradable fiber such as nylon and polyester.

The sad thing about being a fashion victim, is that the look does not last long. If you conform to the pressure of social acceptance, they will be another look next season -and it turns into an unhealthy cycle. You are not making an investment at your style, but create unnecessary waste.

Think style. Not fashion fad.

We discussed at length about style and discussed some of the fashion icons.

Take Jackie Onassis or Diane Von Furstenberg. Mentioned these names, you can almost draw a picture of how they look! They had their own unique style — from the way they set their hair, the clothing they wear to the accessories they put on. They stay classy and became a fashion icon because of it. Style can become your own personal branding!

How can we be more responsible consumer this festive season and avoid unnecessary consumption?

When it comes to clothing, Mayra gave us a tip that is extremely easy to adopt.

Build a sustainable wardrobe with this few simple steps:

1.Create a new look with what you already have.

Think about the last time you went out shopping for a new item! You would have likely spent a couple of hours (or more) from finding a parking, trying out stuff, walk to another shop to compare, queuing to pay and only to stressed out when you ended up home without buying anything. If you spend the same hours sorting out your wardrobe and mix-matching your clothes — top with another bottom for example, you could have come up with an entirely new outfit and style!

Perhaps if you need an outfit for a night — ask your friend or family for a loan. There is no need for unnecessary shopping for something you’d wear a few hours.

2.Accessorize your outfit

Invest in belts, ear rings, jewelries etc. to brighten your outfit. But do look after eco-friendly jewelry and learn the right way to store them for longer-life.

3.Invest in quality

If you have to purchase something new, aim for something that will last. Bear in mind, there are a reasons why some item are cheap.

Read the labels, and avoid synthetic fabrics. Synthetic fabrics releases microplastic after washing and goes on to pollute the ocean. Go for natural fiber such as wool, cotton, linen etc. which last longer.

When shopping for animal fiber like Alpaca or Lamb Wool, don’t be afraid to ask where the material is source. Go for those brands that are transparent to where they source and share their animal welfare policy openly. Do your homework and read about pro and cons about use of animal fiber in apparels. If Dye is used, ensure its natural dye

3.Take better care of your clothes.

Avoid over-washing your clothes, air them out instead. Hand wash in cold water and hang flat.

Avoid dryer and ironing as it consume energy.

4.Donate what you can no longer wear and shop at second hand stores.

Most clothes can be recycled and why don’t make good use of them by donating it. Shop at vintage and most second hand shops have pre-loved items that you will complement your style.

5.Adopt the same ethics when you shop online

We all want free shipping and return. Most shops offer free shipping over a certain amount and longer return days. This makes a person shop more and since there is low-risk, most shoppers tend to return the item they purchase. We can help prevent waste caused by unnecessary handling of the returns such as re-trucking and re-packaging by being smarter about our purchases.

There are many ways to avoid fast-fashion fads and be sustainable.

“Fashion should be fun”, said Mayra, and we couldn’t agree more!

Signing off with a Happy Stress-Free Christmas to everyone!

About Imarit — Mindful Luxury. Imarit was born to create fashion that is both inspired and shaped consciously through the Danish design with the mission of empowering Andean craftsmanship.

Easysize is machine-learning-first company; most of what we do revolves around our data and our algorithms. To further our learning, I signed up and attended ML Prague 2018 conference in late March. It was a fun smaller conference, where I feel I learned a lot and our team will benefit from the investment in my attendance.

However, I realized that ML Prague was my first conference after a few years off from conference attending. Over my career in academia and industry, I have attended and presented at numerous conferences. At times, I come back rejuvenated, full of new ideas, connections, and knowledge — other times, however, I return frustrated that I gained nothing for the time and money invested in attending. Frustrated, I just stopped attending.

Now, as I return to conferences, I have set out a list of guiding principles for choosing which conference to attend. Hopefully this guide, borne from battle scars of this “conference veteran” can be helpful to others in their planning.

1. Do your research — don’t just chase the big-name conference

There are so many conferences, it’s impossible to attend them all (or even most). I recommend focusing on conferences in your region — as they combine learning with networking. Do your research and find the ones happening around you, and focus on selecting the best ones from those.

Sure, global conferences are out there, but I usually find smaller more relaxed conferences way more helpful than industry behemoths. Most global-scale conferences feel too big to focus and learn — they are there to showcase the latest and greatest — which can be inspiring, but also much more esoteric than attending smaller conference with more practical learning goals. I find smaller conferences more efficient in enabling learning new skills. Further, conference that are either focused on a particular vertical of data science (recommenders, image recognition, etc) or focused on practical hand-on learning (implementation, optimization, scaling, etc.) tend to be more efficient yet as they dive deeper into the problems encountered in solving real problems.

2. True value at conferences is in hand-on workshops that help you with your short-term goals.

Data Science is a team sport powered by the open source movement and our relationship to scientific discovery. The sharing that happens in workshops is fantastically deep and pragmatic. As a result, in planning which conference to attend (or which events at conferences to attend) I focus on workshops on skills or methods I need in a short term.

I strongly believe that one does not go to a conference and develop deep, actionable intuition of deep learning in a one-day workshop, or worse, a 30 minute talk. If I need to grasp the algebra behind an algorithm, it’s unlikely to happen in such a short period of time. However, what I can grasp in a workshop are the mechanics of specific approach that will get me started in my own experiments, or get started with a new package I am exploring.

Even more importantly — while I can grasp the math and code from a paper published online, getting hands on experience with a new technology, approach, or skill, and be able to ask questions as I progress, are key reasons for me to go and invest in a conference.

3. Prepare ahead of time

Follow up on all pre-conference instructions about setting up Docker images, virtual machines or whatever else your presenters are using. The learning is hands on, and you need your computer to be ready.

If at all clear what specific methods will be discussed, do some reading ahead of time, so you do not have to be figuring out fundamental topics there on the ground. Read the papers that go over the math of the approach, read through guides, and get a basic intuition for the method. That way you can focus on grasping more details and nuance while at the workshops.

4. Be active in the workshop

During the workshop take notes, ask questions — as much as necessary to actually understand things. At ML Prague I took an introductory workshop to Spark and Scala, and forced myself to actually work through some of the problems given as hands on tasks. For example, we were to build a simple prime number generator in Scala. Being a statistician, just begrudgingly switching from R to Python, writing in Scala (which is Java based) was new to me, but having completed the task, I began to get a feel for this new language.

One can passively read through a paper, article, or package documentation, but only at a conference can you engage in a nuanced conversation with someone who has walked the path you’re embarking on — do not waste this opportunity

5. Set time aside for homework

Finally, not everything crystallizes during the workshop — make sure you set time aside to further play with the resources given at the workshop, complete tasks you were unable to complete during the session, and best of all try to apply some simple versions of the new skills to your own project and data.

I cannot overstate how important it is to begin to convert the prepared tasks and presentations to my own problems. For example, in a recent workshop, we were given a Docker image with a set of python scripts and Jupyter notebooks. When I began to implement the code for our data, I realized that the presentation team took all sorts of shortcuts in the code, hard-coding steps to work specifically for the toy example and demo. In re-writing code to work with our data, I gained much needed intuition for the method.

6. Keynotes are at worst useless, at best invitations to learn more later.

I am not sure why that is, but so many big keynotes end up being almost without any learning value. They end up being little more than recruitment calls, or simply “look how cool we are” boasts. The rare example, provides an overview of an approach and entices you to take a note to read up on it later — it’s like an abstract to the actual paper. Learning happens later, on your own, reading through the papers cited.

Do not get me wrong, keynotes are fun to attend. After all, how often do you get a chance to see behind the curtain of big players such as Google, or talk to the authors of the methods and packages you use everyday. However, it would be a mistake to choose a conference because someone big name will talk for 30 minutes .. about anything.

I find the keynotes an excellent time to spend time digesting, materials from hand-on workshops (See point #5)

In sum

Overall — at conferences we often drink from a proverbial water hose. To drive this metaphor into the ground, without proper forethought, it’s easy to end up wet all over, yet still thirsty — trying to absorb so much, nothing is meaningful. Setting key learning goals ahead of time, finding the optimal venue for these goal, and focusing your time and effort on achieving this learning should help ensure that the time, effort, and resources invested in attending the conference pays off.

About the Author

Igor Holas, Ph.D., leads the machine learning efforts at Easysize. Igor is trained in behavioral research, has published both on child psychology and statistics, and he co-founded a mental health monitoring and crisis prediction software startup which is successfully serving patients in USA, Australia, and Europe. He’s an all around cool cat, who enjoys to sail.

Why do customers return items? This question has been on minds of fashion e-commerce executives for a long time. The answer might surprise you — as nearly 70–75% of all returns in fashion e-commerce are unnecessary and can be prevented. In this post we shed light on the common misconceptions and motivations shoppers have for buying and returning.

What return forms are not telling

Ask any e-commerce manager about the most common return reasons in their shop, and they will instantly refer to the latest numbers from return forms.

Most online shops rely on (often exclusively) the return forms, filled by shoppers, to determine why an item is returned and how to deal with a shopper’s return request. As logical as this seems, how reliable are the shoppers inputs really?

Size is usually one of the leading responses with an average 65–70% of shoppers stating this as the reason for their return. Finding the right size is a well-known and a long-standing problem in the industry, so it’s no surprise that people will return due to the wrong size and fit.

However, sometimes shoppers select this reason, because it won’t require any additional explanation. Size is typically placed at the top of the form, and a shopper will just tick this off to save time and not think more of it.

Return forms are used on an assumption that shoppers will be truthful and will pick the most suitable reason for a return. In reality, shoppers often don’t bother to find the right reason in a form and simply pick an option that will not raise any question. This is specially relevant in cases where a shopper intends to exploit return policies.

When a return is not what it seems to be

Why do shoppers exploit return policies? The answer to this question derives from the shopper’s motivation for making a purchase in the first place. In an ideal world, you buy what you want and, unless there is a problem with an item, you keep it and don’t need to think about returns. But e-commerce is more messy and complicated than that and that introduces other reasons for purchasing. For example:

1. Buy-to-try
The primary thing that separates the shopping experience in regular brick-and-mortar stores from online shops is the possibility of trying on fashion before buying it. Shoppers can test it out to find the perfect size, fit or put together a new look. In online shops this possibility is limited (fully or partially), so some shoppers will intentionally purchase more items than they intend to keep and will replicate this fitting room experience in their homes.

Common misconception: “Yes, shoppers will end up returning some items but at least they will keep some and will definitely be happy with their choice”.

Reality: It is a burden on the shops inventory and increases shipping and return costs. The shop failed to educate and provide enough information to help shoppers make the right decision.

2. Buy-to-rent
This is another example of shopping habits from brick-and-mortar stores being brought into e-commerce. “Buy-to-rent” is a behaviour when a shopper wears an item for a special occasion with a label still intact and returns it within the period allowed by the return policy.

Common misconception: “A full refund will only be allowed if the item is in good condition. So if the labels are not intact or an item has visibly been worn, there will be no refund. It’s a good protection for shops”.

Reality: This introduces additional costs to check, sort, and clean items as well as costs related to shipping and returns. This behaviour rarely translates into loyalty — shoppers simply use the policies to their advantage with little to no regard for the shop.

3. Resellers
A behaviour typically seen at flash-sales sites or during sales campaigns and deep discounts. Shoppers buy a lot of items at an attractive price, try to resell it, and return everything they didn’t manage to sell back to a shop.

Common misconception: “This will contribute positively to our revenue and GMV”.

Reality: Returned items are usually hard to sell (sales campaigns will be over), so it often turns out to be a loss for shops.

4. Instagrammers
With the rise of social media and influencer marketing, some shoppers purchase fashion for the sake of social media likes and subsequently return it back to the shop after taking photos.

Common misconception: “This can be an interesting social media campaign”.

Reality: As with the others, there are additional costs to check, sort, and clean items and the costs to ship and return. Similarly to the “buy-to-rent” scenario these returns rarely turn into a tangible business opportunity for shops (especially multi-brand shops or marketplaces).

What behavioural returns are and why you should care

Some returns are absolutely necessary and serve to mitigate shopper’s risk. What if the wrong item is shipped? What if the item looks different from the photos? What if the item is broken or damaged ? All these things occur regularly and a shopper must have the opportunity to return.

However, often returns happen due to a shopper’s mistake (for example, buying the wrong size) or intention to exploit return policies. These type of returns are called behavioural returns — as they happen because of a certain type of user behaviour during shopping (whether it’s a mistake or an intention to return). Behavioural returns usually contribute to 70–75% of all returns, so by addressing this issue shops can significantly reduce their returns.

As shown above, behaviour of users varies but all these types of returns have something in common— they are unnecessary and can be prevented.

For a long time, shops only focused on making the experience of return as pleasant as possible is essential to online shops — not a lot was done to prevent returns from happening in the first place.

By understanding the true motivation and nature of a return, shops can take measures to reduce these unnecessary behavioural returns.

At Easysize we use a machine-learning algorithm to figure out why your shoppers make purchases and whether they will return them. We analyse how shoppers behave on a website, what shopping and returns patterns they had historically, and how the same brands & items perform across shops. We continuously train our algorithm to recognise high-risk behaviours — whether it’s buying the wrong size, instagrammers, buying-to-rent etc.

To know more about the nature of returns and how Easysize works visit our website www.easysize.me.

Hi! My name is David and I am the CTO of Easysize. We work with large fashion retailers on identifying and preventing returns in real time. I have 8 years of experience in data-driven products, machine learning and SaaS. In this post, I’ll share some of the techniques we employ while working with our clients’ precious data.

As with many other companies nowadays, Easysize is data driven. All our products rely heavily on how much and what kind of data we have. Together with all the data we get from tracking and mining, we also work with the data we get from our clients. Here are my 5 best pieces of advice when doing exactly that!

1. Get the data early and automate the process

Whether you are just starting, or have been working in a data driven field for a long time, getting more data is always a priority. We require our clients to provide us with large sets of historical data before we even start the integration process. At this stage, the priority is the trust between you and your customer, and your ability to ensure safety and security of the data.

We tend to use the most secure tools for data transfer that are available. Most common practice is a SFTP server with IP filtration, which ensures that no one else except for ourselves and the client will have access to raw data files.

If, like us, you rely both on historical data and continuous data updates, you should help your clients setup automated data extractions. One way to achieve that is through API (record by record) or by using the same SFTP server and regular uploads of raw files.

2. Don’t just dump the data into a database

Ok, so you got the data, now what? You probably need to prepare the data for future use. Given that you have a variety of sources for the same kind of data, the most important thing at this stage is to standardise its format and structure.

Even though you probably spent some time preparing a nice document with data requirements for your clients and explained all the needed formats and whatnot, I’m afraid getting clean data from your customers is just not that simple. Most of your clients will have their own, unique data structure and they usually tend to simplify their life rather than yours. But worry not, everyone has to deal with the same problems and here is what we do.

We have a golden rule, and that is: Never modify initial raw files manually.

Just by simply following that rule we ended up with a pretty flexible setup, when before processing the CSVs we get from our clients we put them through a preparation process. Every client has their own data processing configuration, that allows for a variety of modifications, from renaming data columns to applying regular expressions to the eachrow. This setup help us maintain a single process of cleaning, parsing, structuring, and loading to any file after it has gone through the preparation. And we are dealing with fashion data, which is messy at best.

3. Make sure you will have the data when you need it

One of the biggest challenges with automated data extractions and complicated loading process is that your parsing/cleaning processes need to learn from somewhere. In our case, we went through several years of verification of data and we have built a substantial dictionaries that allow us to automatically process anything that we have seen before or anything similar to what we have seen. But a big chunk of the data still has to go through verification before it end up in the hands of your app or API or what have you.

Try to save every last bit of information you use when verifying. This, together with building a dictionary of already verified data, will help you to speed up the process and reach almost real-time lever.

4. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst

Security is the most crucial part when it comes to handling any kind of valuable data. That means that you must do everything you possibly can, and more, to protect customers’ data. In our case, apart from implementing every last bit of security measures recommended by vendors like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, setting up all sorts of firewalls and VPNs, we’ve decided to go one step further.

Before we process any data through the data loading pipeline it undergoes complete anonymising. In this step, we encrypt and anonymise every piece of information that could indicate that it belongs to one of our clients. Fortunately, that doesn’t limit our algorithms in any way, and we are still able to get a 100% of information out of the data. However, by doing this step we make sure that our data can never be used against our clients.

5. Do not discard, save for later

Every new client and data source might bring new data to the table. The common practice is to ignore the outlying info and stick with a standard set of attributes. In the early days, we also followed this common practice, but we learned the hard way that every piece of information counts and that there is no way to foresee what we might need in the future. Now we save every piece of information that we get from our clients in a structured way.

Following this rule also forces you to look ahead while designing the data structure. Besides that we also make sure that all our algorithms are aware that some information might be missing.

Hope you found this useful!

/David

Easysize started nearly four years ago with an ambitious goal to decrease returns in fashion e-commerce and solve the so called sizing issue (e.g. challenges with picking the right clothing and shoe size), that has been puzzling the minds of industry experts for decades.

Over the last couple of years we have been fortunate to work closely with and learn from some of the largest fashion online-retailers and iconic fashion brands across the world. These collaborations helped us realize the need to expand our product to address e-commerce returns not related to sizing. Today, I am excited to announce the launch of this new improved product.

Returns in fashion e-commerce of the future

Returns have always been a controversial topic in fashion e-commerce.

On one hand, nearly 20–25% of fashion bought online is returned and globally the industry spends around $63B / year on handling returns. These costs not only include shipping, delivery, packaging, but also loss/damage to inventory, revenue loss due to need to discount returned merchandise, increase in customer acquisition and retention costs, inventory costs, and so on.

On the other hand, returns are an important part of the shopping experience. For the majority of shoppers having a free and seamless return experience is a game changer. According to the latest research by PostNord, 64% of online shoppers in Europe say that an easy return process is one of the key factors while shopping online.

This dichotomy puts a huge pressure on e-commerce operators. How does one minimize the costs of returns, when a permissive return policy is an essential part of customers’ choice and their shopping experience?

Easysize has a solution. We believe, that there are 2 key components in a successful strategy aiming to decrease returns:

1. Understand why shoppers return — not what they write in the return forms, but their true motivation.

2. Prevent returns before they happen — e.g. before a shopper purchases an item or the item is shipped.

Understanding the true nature of returns

Some returns are absolutely necessary — let’s say a wrong item was shipped, or an item was damaged — shoppers must be able return these orders without any extra hassle. But not all returns are the same.

The majority (70–75%) of returns in fashion e-commerce happens because a shopper made a mistake while purchasing, while in some cases, the shopper placed an order with the explicit intent to return (some or all) of the order. These behavioural returns are redundant and can be prevented.

Here are some common scenarios:

• Wrong size: Sizes differ dramatically between brands, making it hard for shoppers to choose the right size when buying online.
• Cancellations: Mostly happen with cash-on-delivery purchases.
• Buy-to-rent: A shopper buys an item to wear it for a special occasion, saves the tags, sends it back, and claims a full refund.
• Resellers: A shopper buys dozens or hundreds of items at a discount, then resells some of them and returns the rest.
• Instagrammers: A shopper buys fashion items for the sole purpose of taking photos for social media and then returns them after that.
• And many other examples, when shoppers abuse return policies or simply make mistakes.

At Easysize we built an algorithm that analyses shopping and return patterns of customers in order to predict the right size; this was out first product with which we have served our customers since 2014. We have since expanded this product to also identify the return risks of individual shoppers, items, and brands. Together, our analysis now provide us with all the necessary clues to identify and predict unnecessary behavioural returns.

Most importantly, our data, our algorithm, and our product is not limited to a single shop. Our data comes from shops across the globe. By monitoring shopper behaviours, and item performance across different shops, we’re able to have a deeper and a better understanding of return risk of each cart that is being created.

Providing real-time actionable insights

Our algorithm carefully evaluates each item added to the cart in real-time and estimates a probability of a return. If an item or a cart is flagged as a high risk, we notify the online-shop and advice a potential reason for a return.

We don’t divide shoppers into “bad” and “good”. Instead we evaluate a combination of a shopper’s historic pattern with a specific product and brand added to each cart. We then flag items and carts that may be returned. We do that because a human behaviour is complex. You might be a great customer, when buying t-shirts, but a risky one, when buying jeans (because you like getting a few items to try them at home). We also believe that user behaviour changes all the time, so does the risk of returns.

It’s key that the online shop can take an immediate action and prevent unnecessary returns from happening — before it’s too late, the order is placed, items are packed and shipped, and money and resources were spent handling the return.

With our new product, your shop has the freedom to implement custom rules and address different types of returns in a way, that is the most appropriate for your shoppers.

For example, the correct size can be shown on a product page or a checkout, if a customer is likely to make a mistake.

Alternatively, your shop can offer free express delivery to shoppers and carts that have low return score, driving customer loyalty through unexpected delight. Shops can also take preventive measures towards carts that are likely to abuse return policies by applying different delivery or payment options etc.

We tell shops what and why will be returned in real-time and let them act on this.

The big picture

Fashion is an industry that has a long-standing problem with sustainability. Excessive returns contribute largely to this problem — from the obvious carbon emission associated with logistics to overstocking (in order to keep enough inventory).

Our mission is not simply to help a single business or a shop be more profitable and sustainable. We aim to reshape the entire fashion e-commerce industry by preventing waste and help educate customers to embrace more responsible consumption.

We help online shops to reduce over-consumption and over-stocking items that will not sell or will be returned. We reduce the waste of manufacturing, storing, shipping, and at times destroying the merchandise. We’re committed to making e-commerce more economically and environmentally sustainable. At the end of the day, we believe that this is exactly what the world needs; less waste, more happiness.

– Gulnaz Khusainova, Founder and CEO at Easysize.

Curious to see how our new product works? Check our updated website at easysize.me or drop us a line (info@easysize.me).

Setting up and delivering a great holiday sale is great, but having it contradicted by a swell of returns after the fact brings your success level down — and your expenses up. An estimated $19.4 billion of goods purchased online between November and December are expected to be returned this year — more than 30% of all projected e-commerce sales, and an 8% increase compared to last year.

This can add up: 80% of retailers are offering free shipping on returns over the holidays, costing about $5 to $7 per item returned. There’s also the cost of processing a return — “about $5 in credit card fees and labor costs to prepare an item for resale, such as ironing, folding, and repackaging”.

Sounds discouraging, but ask yourself this key question: Are your returns, in fact, preventable?

One major issue is fit, with fit-related problems blamed for 57% of returns, despite the focus on accurate product portrayal and the additions of size charts, product descriptions, and customer reviews.

This is partly due to the increase of gift-buying over the holidays, so customers must ‘guess’ sizing and fit for presents for their friends and family members. We speculate that the high variability of size between retailers also adds to customer confusion around sizing when purchasing online.

Figure 1 — Purchases and returns increase over the holiday period.

To test this hypothesis, we analyzed orders from about 200,000 users and across 549 different brands, over a period of 7 months from August 2015 up to July 2016. When we looked at the total number of purchases, we observed that there is, of course, an increase in purchases during the holiday season, seen in Figure 1. In Figure 2, you can see that, surprisingly, the increased number of orders are followed by a decrease in the different number of purchased brands when compared to the ones purchased during the holiday season, meaning that during the holiday season, customers tend to purchase from a smaller set of brands.

These brands could simply be dominating the market in terms of selection of products, or that they are offering the biggest or most popular sales. Either way, it’s clear that customers tend to explore a lower number of brands during their holiday shopping than they would otherwise.

Fig. 2 — The number of distinct purchased brands drops during holiday season.

If this holidays season you expect to reach orders, and your average basket size is $ with a returns rate of %…

4500 of orders will be returned and you will loose $15750 on returns costs.

With EasySize you can prevent 1339 returns and save $13388.

Request a demo

What’s also interesting is that we found that customers tend to purchase a larger selection of sizes than they normally would during popular holiday sales, due to the steep discounts, thereby increasing the amount of returns. Figure 3 shows the number of unique sizes purchased for each brand over two week intervals, compared to the average number of unique sizes purchased over the entire period. To have an objective baseline, we normalized the number of returns from each brand in the same way.

You can see that the variability of the purchased sizes increases from mid-November, drops after Christmas, but then spikes again around mid-February, probably due to end of season sales. Accordingly, the number of returns increases from mid-November until Christmas, and then returns to a steady rate after Boxing Day.

Figure 3 — The amount of sizes purchased increases during the holiday season.

As purchases increase, the number of purchased sizes increases, and this aspect of ‘guess-timation’ can’t be entirely avoided, retailers are offering a smoother return process. But what about items that aren’t gifts? And what if your customers are buying for people they know well?

One simple solution to ensure that your customers are satisfied and getting exactly what they want is to add a sizing solution to your webshop, like EasySize.

EasySize finds a customer’s best fit in seconds using existing data, without the need for physical, or clothes measurements. For new customers without a shopping history, it predicts the best fit based on the customer’s sizing with other brands — that they already know or have in their closets.

Mitigate the mass of returns heading your way this year, and calculate how much you can save by applying EasySize to your webshop today!

If this holidays season you expect to reach orders, and your average basket size is $ with a returns rate of %…

4500 of orders will be returned and you will loose $15750 on returns costs.

With EasySize you can prevent 1339 returns and save $13388.

Request a demo

How much will size-related returns cost you this holidays season? was originally published in Easysize on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Celebrating the best of the best in fashion retailing, The Drapers Awards are the most highly-respected industry awards aimed at recognising the top performing and most innovative businesses.

“2016 was an exciting year for EasySize and the team. We’re working hard to continuously improve the product, launch new features and bring our technology to new markets. EasySize is chosen by leading retailers, and we are delighted to be recognised by The Drapers Awards” — Gulnaz Khusainova, CEO of EasySize.

“Best Innovation in Fashion Retail” award recognises technological innovation that has made a sustainable impact on the operation of a fashion business and the experience of customers in the past 12 months. The winner will be announced on The Drapers Awards 2016 dinner in November. It will be selected by a panel of respected experts in fashion retail, that includes executives from Karen Millen, John Lewis, Harvey Nichols, M&S.

Criteria against which the nominees will be judged:

• How has the innovation positively affected business?
• How has the innovation improved customer experience?
• How the technology creates efficiencies within the business and can be further developed in the future?

EasySize team is excited to join the leading and the most innovative fashion companies at The Drapers Awards. Find the full list of shortlisted companies at awards.drapersonline.com.

About Drapers Awards

The Drapers Awards are the highest profile gathering for fashion retailers in the UK, bringing together the very best that the UK fashion business has to offer. Find more at awards.drapersonline.com

The Drapers Awards 2016 will take place on 17th November 2016 at the venue of Old Billingsgate, in the City of London and is a great chance to come together as a fashion industry to network, learn and celebrate with each other.

About EasySize

EasySize analyses shopping behaviour of millions of users and predicts the correct clothing size. It helps retailers across markets to achieve higher conversions to sales (up to 9.5%) and lower returns down to 9–10%. Find more at easysize.me

EasySize is nominated as the Best Innovation in Fashion Retail was originally published in Easysize on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Conversion funnel is by far the most mysterious and complicated area to understand for webshops. No one can pretend to fully understand it, and just being able to find room for improvement is already a big step. Testing out things in the conversion funnel and measuring the impact is extremely fastidious and demanding. On top of it, you can’t change several things at once, as you need to measure the overall impact of every single change.

But don’t worry, online shops have been working for years on conversion funnel, new features are available and things are slowly getting better.

I will try to cover the 4 things which can potentially kill your funnel as a fashion e-commerce actor, as well as some insights on what you could implement to avoid it.

1. Lack of trust

Have you ever been tempted to buy something on a website and after adding the product to the basket, asked yourself: I don’t know this website, is it serious? And what did you do? Probably, like many others, left the website, went on Google, ended up somewhere else and never came back.

The increase of fraud over the past years has turned into a lack of trust, becoming a major problem.

But there are easy and simple ways to improve it. Here are some tips to help you with trust issues:

• Company information: it needs to be obvious for your potential customers that your company is real. No legal notice? No contact details? No company description? No face of the people working there? Don’t be surprised if people leave your website! Yes, people buy more and more online but they also get more and more suspicious, so make sure they know you are real, honest and easy to reach.
• No genuine reviews: latest studies showed that 80% of online buyers check reviews before finalizing their purchase. If you don’t have reviews, especially genuine ones from a third party, your potential customers will simply leave your website. Don’t think you can fool them with a few reviews written by your developer. That just doesn’t work anymore.
• Lack of practical information: your user conditions need to be clear and transparent. Shipping fees? Returns? Refund? Make sure your conditions don’t sound tricky, that’s a killer for your conversion.

2. User experience

This one is a classic. How many times did you end up on a website where everything seemed complicated? Too many products? Unclear information? These are some important points that -if you do it right- will help you get a higher conversion:

• Ergonomy: your online shop needs to be easy to navigate. Users need to find the right information fast, and that information needs to be relevant and easy to read. It’s all about finding the right balance between design and ease of use.
• Number of steps: another big conversion funnel killer is the amount of steps during the checkout process. Too many steps can seem complicated while too few can scare the users with a feeling of unclear information. A good way to deal with this is to give the users options like registration (user account or not) or payment info (save option). It is also a good idea to display the final price in a clear way.
• Unique user experience: even if every customer journey is more or less the same, a good way to improve conversion funnel is to make it look personal for the user. That can be done in many ways, just few examples can be: live chat availability, “targeted” reviews, similar product suggestions etc.

3. Size guide

This is a more critical point. All shops use more or less the same size guide with measurements and sizes correspondence. But do you know that, when users click on a size guide, it’s one of the easiest moments to convert them. And what do you do instead? You probably put doubts in their heads by showing too much information that will be confusing.

It’s time to rethink it:

• Measurements: When was the last time you saw a measuring tape? Probably long time ago. I personally don’t have any at home and I guess the same happens to most of you. So why do you ask your customers to measure themselves when you know they can’t or don’t want to?
• Mobile conversion: Have you noticed how many people visit your website from mobile platforms? Most of the webshops don’t have a size guide on their mobile version, which of course is killing conversion -except if you have free return policy, in which case customers end up ordering the same piece of clothing in 3 different sizes. Just to be sure.
• Returns: Do you really think your size guide doesn’t have a big impact on your returns? By pushing customers to use an efficient size guide, you will increase confidence and conversion, but also -most likely- reduce returns. No one’s going to return clothes that just fit.

If it’s not obvious yet, maybe you should check out EasySize one more time!

4. Fees

Pricing has always been an issue. Being able to have attractive prices and keep an okay margin is a big challenge. Most of the webshops get attractive prices by keeping shipping and/or returning fees. Even if studies showed that customers are ready to pay a bit more if that makes them believe the website if more trustworthy, fees are a big killer for fashion e-commerce.

• Shipping fees: these fees are almost non-existent anymore. Most fashion e-commerce websites offer free shipping. And the reason is simple: conversion. So if you can’t deal with free shipping, a classic option is to put a minimum amount to the order value to get free shipping.
• Returning fees: returning fees are more complicated. Although the returns cost you money, free return policy brings a much higher conversion. This subject could start a whole new article, for now just keep it in mind.

I hope this gave you a more clear idea of the areas that really matter in fashion e-commerce. I would recommend you to start identifying conversion leaks on your website so you can not only fix the biggest issues, but also make them work in your favor.

Most of these ideas are not rocket science and are easy to set up, but that doesn’t mean you should start testing them randomly. Take some time to go through your online shop, think out of the box and identify your most important pages, collect user feedback and prioritize which tests you’ll run first.

Fashion e-commerce: 4 things that kill your conversion funnel! was originally published in Easysize on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As consumers, we love getting to purchase — and celebrate — a size down in clothing. The excitement quickly goes away when we go to the next store and realize we can’t squeeze into the jean size we just purchased at the previous store. And while every shopper’s goal should be to find clothes that fit perfectly, it’s important to understand there is more to your body and health than just clothing sizes. Know what brands fit your body best in order to find the most perfect fit. It is okay to order a size up if your usual size fits snug — that doesn’t change your body measurements.

Sizing can be determined on where the article of clothing is manufactured. When shopping, it is important to look at where the article of clothing is being made. Some American clothing lines purposely make their clothes larger, because consumers will always purchase a smaller number size. This is called vanity sizing, and it is a common mistake many consumers make when shopping for that perfect outfit. French designers tend to design smaller than most American designers. Clothes designed in the UK tend to be more generous than those designed in Italy or other European countries. Sizing all depends on the designer’s preference, and where the product is manufactured. Knowing what size you wear for each designer can help you narrow down your options when purchasing that perfect outfit.

And as for the world of online retail shopping, its popularity continues to soar, with Forbes citing 201.7 million digital shoppers in 2015 and a projected 206.2 million for 2016. But the convenience of online shopping is being hit by one inconvenient factor; the lack of fitting rooms, and sources report 40 percent of online apparel purchases are being returned, with 60 percent of those returns cited for size fitting issues. Retail websites often present their size options in a dropdown listing, without the customer being able to properly consider or select individualized styles and preferences, or how different brands not only fit differently but also showcase different types of sizing.

But EasySize is working to reshape the online shopping process, by anticipating those styles, sizes and preferences. Using an algorithm to analyze consumer purchase behavior, EasySize’s technology is lowering the online return rate, with up to a 35 percent return drop and furthermore converting at a higher rate compared to a normal size guide.

So if you’re tired of ill-fitting clothes and returns on your webshop, use this innovative solution to take the stress out of your business once and for all.

Same size, different fit was originally published in Easysize on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Let’s focus, for example, on Spain. To shed some light, let’s take a look at some numbers: the percentage of online consumers here is not as big as above mentioned, narrowing it down to a 42%. It’s not a secret that Spain hasn’t had the best of times economically speaking — somewhat called economic crisis — although that doesn’t seem to matter in the fashion industry. In 2015, a vast amount of 7.3 million people bought clothes, complements and sports goods online, spending in this process more than 800 million euros. Yet after seven years without barely any movement, 2015 sales still increased by 4%.

Nowadays, we happily say that the fashion industry in Spain is a well-oiled machine that is gaining more acknowledgment internationally. It is the only country with two representatives within the biggest fashion groups in the world: Inditex and Mango. Last mentioned is present in more countries than any other brand, and Inditex being the indisputable leader with a revenue of 18.12 billion euros annually and selling in 88 markets worldwide.

“Zara is probably the most innovative and devastating retailer in the world”. This sentence was said back in the 90’s by then director of LVMH, Daniel Piette, when Zara (main protagonist from the group Inditex) was a complete stranger in the United States and wasn’t even in the top 10 worldwide sales-wise. “Devastating” might have been a bit harsh, however, it would seem that the group Inditex was craving for a revolution in the, at that time, conservative fashion industry. As of recent numbers, no one can doubt the success of Zara. The Spanish firm closed the second period of 2015 with a turnover 17% higher than the first fiscal semester, selling for 9.4 billion euros, and a net profit of 1.1 billion which is 26% higher compared to the same period the previous year.

One might wonder how is this possible? Or what makes Zara different than other brands? Why is it leading in the no-mercy fashion arena?

If we take a glance at their business model, we will see three key points from which other brands could learn from. First of all, the multinational company has worked their way up through online sales. Since some years ago, the retail giant — as they like to call it in Spanish — bets firmly on e-commerce, establishing their online presence all around the globe of their main brands like Zara, Zara Home, Oysho, Stradivarius, Massimo Dutti and Pull & Bear. Since going online in 2010, Inditex has opened online stores in China, Denmark, Japan, Sweden, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. All in all, the group is selling online in 28 countries.

Secondly, the strategy of the company involves very little stocking and updating the collections often. Unlike other brands that try to predict trends one year in advance, Zara’s business model eliminates the risk of “missing” this trend by restocking their designs twice a week. This strategy has two great outcomes: the customers go more often to the stores, as well as it makes the customers feel that if they want to buy something they should buy it now or the stock will run out.

Last, but not least, the group’s presence on social media has a big impact on their sales. Their profiles on the different social media platforms are a reflection of their campaigns and products from their online stores. With millions of followers, the retail giant makes sure their fans and supporters are always up-to-date with the latest news and styles. For example, Zara has 1 million followers on Twitter, while their Instagram are followed by more than 9 million people worldwide. However, to calculate a real presence of all Inditex’ brands on these networks, we would have to sum up all the followers from all the brands, which each have millions of followers. It’s clear to say, that the brands’ online presence is huge and they are using the social media tools in clever ways to drive sales.

Inditex has worked hard to become the world’s #1 fashion distributor and keeping their international crown, while others brands are still trying to get to the top. The retail giant tries to keep their distance from their direct rivals such as H&M group and Gap. With more than 6.800 stores worldwide, Inditex is focusing on their development in growth of already existing markets — both offline and online.

Why Inditex is the world’s largest clothing retailer was originally published in Easysize on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.