19th March 2021
POV: Snap Acquires Fit Analytics
Background:
Snap has acquired Fit Analytics, a technology start-up that has built technology to help shoppers pick the right-sized clothing and footwear when they shop online.
Details and Implications:
Fit Analytics’ technology allows shoppers to enter their own measurements into a tool called Fit Finder, which uses machine learning to match those dimensions to clothes and shoes in order to find the right fit.
The tool enables users to select how they would like the item to fit from very loose to very tight and offers recommendations based on their information. Fit Analytics also has personalisation tools and other analytics to help retailers understand how they can sell more. It already partners with 18,000 retailers to help provide more accurate product matches and reduce returns, which is of growing importance in terms of consumer experience.
Snap has not yet commented on how it plans to integrate Fit Analytics into its existing platforms. However, Fit Analytics has confirmed that it will continue to operate its existing business and will help Snap build out its shopping platform. The acquisition will therefore accelerate Snap’s efforts to bring e-commerce and in-app purchases to Snapchat and expand its revenue stream and help turn its platform into a more commerce orientated experience for both brands and consumers. Snapchat’s core audiences are teens and younger users, who are also a major target for fashion retailers.
Online shopping has accelerated and boomed during the pandemic and consumers’ online shopping experiences are becoming more integrated into digital platform ecosystems. Snap is not the first social media platform to integrate new shopping features recently. Facebook and Instagram Shops, Instagram Live Shopping and partnerships with Shopify across WhatsApp and TikTok, are all indicators that media and commerce are merging and the sales funnel is continuing to collapse. These innovations are in turn driving retailers to reconsider their e-commerce experiences on their standalone sites to keep them competitive.
There are also reports that Fit Analytics is planning on developing a new system designed to match clothing using images that customers upload themselves. Snapchat has existing body-mapping technology that it uses to model Bitmoji fashion items and in the past, Snap has worked with brands such as Nike and Levi’s on AR experiences to allow Snapchatters to put the brand’s clothes on their Bitmojis. The two technologies could work well together in providing digital try-on tools in the future, especially as merging digital and real-world environments has been a focus for Snap.
Summary:
Snap is the latest social media platform to evolve into a shopping destination and this acquisition will expand Snapchat’s augmented reality capabilities and help diversify its revenue streams, which at the moment are heavily reliant on advertising. This acquisition may bring big opportunities for fashion brands on the platform and it could provide interesting new ways for D2C brands to reach younger audiences as more business are set up to live exclusively inside platform ecosystems where their consumers live their lives.
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