Rackery | Find you Fit

Get to Know Rackery and founder Raghu Murali.

Fit technology is getting smarter. Here is the latest interview with Rackery, an emerging virtual try-on that extracts measurement through photos with a 99% accuracy.

For founder Raghu Murali, Rackery is designed to create a seamless user experience. While interviewing Murali, he revealed the main objective of the Rackery approach.

“ We set out identifying what are the bottlenecks in online shopping for clothes and assessed how to remove these. Making it simple for users to input data and achieve a fit rating." -Murali

Rackery accomplishes this through photo measurements systems and machine learning.

Rackery is an emerging virtual fit measurement tool that combines an online search engine with a virtual try-on experience. Founded by Raghu Murali, a former consultant and electrical engineer, his approach to solving the online fit problem is technical and innovative.

The Experience is Simple:  

Users can input designated measurements into their phone or submit a photo using “Photofit”, Rackery’s proprietary photo measurement extraction technology.

The data collected is compared to over 100 selected brands the app works with to give the user a personalized fit experience. Currently the app works with shirts and blouses but plans to add pants to the catalogue of items available for a fit rating in the near future. Users can shop the brands based on the fit suggestions. Rackery even provides a fit rating consisting of a five star scale.

Rackery even creates videos to explain how to make measurements. These instructions are useful for individuals who may not be familiar with how to take measurements. Best of all, like all great apps, Rackery is FREE!
 

Read the interview below and try it out here.

What makes Rackery personal for Raghu Murali as a founder?

I think there are plenty of online brands, retailers, marketplaces, which provide you umpteen choices but they create too much clutter and confusion to an online shopper. We wanted to create a clean seamless experience to the user, where the journey started with the brands that fit.

All this is personal to me and my team because we are the most demanding users of Rackery. We set out identifying what are the bottlenecks in online shopping for clothes and assessed how to remove these - be it using a measuring tape, reading a sizing chart, or trying to keep up with a brand’s latest styles. As we set about enabling the online shopping experience, we are constantly reminded about how much we enjoy doing this, and how much more there needs to be done!

How does the background in Electrical Engineering contribute to the experience of Rackery?

Both my consulting and engineering background help me not only to solve problems but also identify these pitfalls in the first place. With apparel e-commerce poised to take off, I saw a huge issue in terms of finding the right fit online, both from personal experience as well as surveying a number of users. The next question was what were the potential solutions in this space - we evaluated existing solutions and found that none of them tackled the problem head-on, and thus went about building Rackery. A lot of the core Rackery IP is technology based - the brand database, the PhotoFit technology, and our matching algorithm - with deep roots in engineering.

How does Rackery compare to competitors?

The fashion tech space is filled with a number of players trying to enable fit and size discovery. Many of the traditional pure-play fit companies have been acquired (Clothes Horse*, Fits.me, Fitiquette), and the few that remain are either B2B (TruFit) or cater to a specific segment (e.g. social approach by fitbay). Another group of players are trying to bring in virtual / augmented reality into the buying process, using 3D modeling. We are a B2C company and the first / only company so far to introduce a photo-based recommendation. We are also the only brand discovery platform that focus on fit and sizing*.

How long does it take for photo measurements to be extracted?

The process typically takes a few hours from the time they upload their photos.  

Are more people submitting photos or entering measurements?

Since we launched PhotoFit, we are observing users from 14 to 65 years signing up on Rackery and uploading their photos.  

Download the Rackery app and let me know what you think!

*Clothes Horse was acquired by Fits.me in 2014

* Although Rackery is one of few platforms focused on size and fit, its is not the only one. FitD is a new emerging platform, Fitle and a few others.