Does online shopping stress you out? Do you place huge orders for clothes online because you never know what will fit or look good? Does in-store shopping stress you out even more?! Many people feel overwhelmed shopping for clothes online because they can’t use a fitting room to try on the pieces they are interested in. Thanks to Israeli startup Zeekit, shoppers will now be able to see what a piece of clothing looks like on them without ever physically putting it on.

Zeekit was founded in 2013 by Yael Vizel to create a virtual fitting room for online shoppers. Their patented technology works by using thousands of shapes to precisely map a person’s image and then overlaying a piece of clothing to virtually fit on your body. This allows the clothing to be fitted to your image in a hyper-realistic way. In the past, Zeekit had been selling the technology to brands, and most of them used it to just put their clothing on Zeekit’s models for their websites. This allowed companies to showcase their lines on different models with different body types without hiring their own.

On May 13th Zeekit was acquired by the American company Walmart who plan to use Zeekit’s technology to the fullest capacity and give their customers an immersive online shopping experience. Shoppers will be able to upload a picture of themselves and try any item of clothing in Walmart’s collection. This includes brands such as Levi’s, Free People, Champion, and so many more. This comes after a huge rise in online shopping due to the COVID19 pandemic. Brick and mortar stores have had to pivot as online shopping has exploded. Brands are approaching their online appearance and the quality of the experience they are able to provide their customers. Many brands have taken new approaches and developed new strategies to cater to the rise in demand for online shopping.

Zeekit technology has been proven to reduce the rate of returns for online orders by 36% which is a major improvement to their bottom line. Customers also won’t order as many unwanted pieces in the first place and then return the majority of the order because they will have seen the clothing on themselves before ordering. The immediate result of this is less shipping which not only cuts costs for the company, but it is better for the environment.

Customers using Zeekit will also be able to save pictures of themselves from the virtual fitting room in order to share with family and friends to ask their opinion before purchasing, creating a new social aspect to online shopping that had only been possible with in person shopping in the past.

With this new acquisition, shoppers can start looking forward to a totally new approach to online clothing shopping.

Groundbreaking Israel content is developed by ISRAEL21c’s Digital Ambassadors.

Judith Rosenbluth is an ISRAEL21c Digital Ambassador.