Why this Techstars grad is expanding from fashion to sports equipment and VR

Under the new name Bold Metrics, the company has added Sports Metric and VR Metric to its digital suite of preditive human body measurement tools, which will exist alongside the original Fashion Metric. 

 

“We always knew there were more applications to body measurements than just apparel,” said Daina Burnes, CEO and co-founder. 

 

Using Fashion Metric's machine learning technology, Sport Metric’s algorithm will help consumers purchase sporting equipment online that traditionally required in-store visits, like golf clubs, bicycles and skis. Meanwhile, VR Metric will be used to help create true-to-size avatars in the emerging VR space.

 

“We’re pulling these industries through the keyhole,” said co-founder and COO Morgan Linton. “These industries are the last bit hanging on for shoppers to go in and shop in person. We’re enabling all these industries to go online through the next generation of commerce.”

 

Burnes and Linton launched the company with a team of data scientists in 2013 to provide retail consumers with digital systems that accurately measure themselves online — without the use of a body scanner, measuring tape or photographs.

 

They originally deployed Fashion Metric to predict consumer sizing for a standalone e-commerce store that offered both custom apparel and off-the-rack clothing. In 2015, Burnes and Linton began marketing it to businesses to provide sizing data that retailers can use for optimizing inventory and decreasing return rates. 

 

The algorithm combines user survey questions around weight, height, age, jean size and bra size with four years of body measurement data collected from body scanning companies. The result is 90 predictive measurements that come within three percent of what a master tailor would measure in person, the team said.

 

“It’s a data-centric approach inspired by an old skill,” said Burnes, whose grandparents ran tailor shops in Europe. 

 

Headquartered in Austin, Bold Metrics has a team of nine individuals, with several stationed in the Bay Area. The company is a 2014 graduate of the Techstars accelerator program and has raised north of $2.6 million to date, with plans to raise additional rounds.