Virtual model feature at Lands’ End 13 Jun 2005
22 comments Latest by Pam
The virtual model feature at Lands’ End lets you try clothing on “a model that’s practically a mirror image of yourself.” That may be pushing it a bit — unless you look in the mirror and see bad 3-D rendering — but the idea is an interesting one. You can enter your body shape, build, shoulder type (for men), bust size (for women), height, weight, etc. Then you can see how clothes look on a virtual version of yourself, complete with turn-to-the-left and turn-to-the-right views.
22 comments so far (Jump to latest)
Erica 13 Jun 05
Lane Bryant had that, a few years ago. I really liked the feature. I don’t know why they would have gotten rid of it.
Jeni 13 Jun 05
Erica - Cost, probably. The licensing cost for the virtual model isn’t cheap, and it’s my understand that Lane Bryant doesn’t earn a lot from their online store.
Peter Cooper 13 Jun 05
Boo.com (possibly the most famous .bomb) had a similar feature. It suffered because hardly anyone had the bandwidth to use it, let alone the patience of waiting for Java to load. Even now, though.. I’m unsure. Nothing beats actually trying the clothes on for me.
Kevin Tamura 13 Jun 05
I’ve been looking into doing this for the comany I work for. Technical issues (backend ecommerce, talking to inventory, sct) are our biggest stumbling blocks, the other is hours. We don’t seem to have enough hours to get it off the ground and then keep it going. Still it’s a great idea and would be nice if it could be implemented with out all the trouble.
Jeff Hartman 13 Jun 05
So you were pretending to be a woman trying on swim suits…or is there something we don’t know? :)
Dennis 13 Jun 05
I like the 3D app on Land’s End for trying on clothes. But the Sears Virtual Decorator is a bore. Simply serving up JPEGs of 3D models. Boring and frankly a disappointing user experience. A much better approach can be seen on Kohler’s website where you can actually personalize and interact with a 3D environment and create your own bathroom with Kohler products. That’s way cool. See: http://kohler1.view22.com/view22/kohler/main.jsp.
larry 13 Jun 05
That feature has been on landsend.com since the ’90s.
Darrel 14 Jun 05
Yea, Larry is right. This was kind of a hot item in the late 90s. Nice to see it still alive.
And thanks for the Kohler link…I’m just about to demolish our bathroom for a remodel…
Alex 14 Jun 05
The Virtual Model Technology is VERY expensive to the retailer- it’s like $300 per ITEM to scan the item into their system. This is why limited product sets are shown that can be placed on the models…
Art Wells 15 Jun 05
Alex, it is very expensive for the retailer, but in fortunate cases, a manufacturer can re-use CAD data generated as part of the engineering process.
In even more fortunate cases, part information can be reused in multiple products. If you consider customer-created “products” made through build-to-order manufacturing, programming to support flexible 3d assembly, then the price per item diminishes rapidly, while offering many. many choices through a simple visual display.
This is rare scenario, but when it works (as it did for the Rejuvenation link in my previous post) it is quite affordable and suprisingly easy to maintain.
Anonymous Coward 15 Jun 05
The Virtual Model Technology is VERY expensive to the retailer- it�s like $300 per ITEM
That actually doesn’t sound that expensive.
Eliot 17 Jun 05
Threadless seems to do well without any virtual models… Maybe the sent-in photos work well enough? I also really like their stock charts.
Peter X 18 Jun 05
Hey, I just noticed another cool 3D Web app the other day. Check out HGTV.com’s new Virtual Kitchen and Bath Designers. Click on “Kitchen Design Center” on the top nav at www.hgtv.com.
I believe this is the next generation of contextual advertising…having manufacturer products availabe to consumers in a 3D environment to configure, option select and personalize.
Jim 31 Oct 05
Check out the new Planner on Best Buy, you can quickly get up and running, and once you are kooked, you can activate the design tools - download an activeX and design the kitchen of you dreams. Also by the My Virtual Model folks!
Baush 28 Mar 06
Hello, I’m an employee at My Virtual Model. Our main goal is to make a virtual showroom that can be customized. True, 3D engines can represent your own kitchen better, but at the cost of hours of dragging, resizing and placing things.
The goal is to buy appliances, not to re-design your kitchen, which is very different.
Also, we aimed at serving as much users as possible without having strict browser dependencies as much as possible with no use of third party plugins or activeX (unlike BestBuy).
It’s great to get community comments ;)
Pam 02 May 06
Baush, I have a business idea that I am interested in using my virtual model technology. I have sent emails. The links on the website do not work. Also several of the website that MVM claims to have models on are no longer available. Is this company planning on going out of business.