Nigerian startup fitted has developed a digital platform that uses machine learning to eliminate inefficiencies in the custom tailoring industry.
Founded in 2021 by Ibi Cookey, fitted empowers tailors and retailers with tools that support them in the unique context of fashion, thus creating an avenue for any customer to get exceptional quality outfits on time anytime.
With its proprietary AI tool, the startup auto-generates and stores customer measurements, cutting down measurement time by around 90 per cent. Its cloud based platform allows tailors to process and track orders, accept payments globally, connect to suppliers, and engage directly with their customers.
“Basically, we equip tailors and fashion brands with everything they need to grow their business,” Cookey told Disrupt Africa.
Despite accounting for the majority of customers’ wardrobes for almost four billion people on earth, the custom clothing industry is largely inefficient and unreliable. Operational processes tend to be extremely manual, as tailors lack the tools to help manage orders and deduce customers’ measurements accurately. As a result, they waste hours reconciling orders manually and iterating on clothes due to inaccurate customer measurements.
Additionally, tailors and retailers remain mostly excluded from formal financial systems. Transactions occur mostly offline and informally, so brands do not have visibility into the performance of their business, or critical data required to scale their business or access bank loans. Customers are equally affected and experience poor fitting clothes and late deliveries.
“A large part of this structural issue is because fashion for emerging markets wasn’t really created to serve the domestic markets or “minorities” very well. It’s not uncommon for men and women of African, Asian or South American descent to find that clothing doesn’t quite fit their unique body shapes – with women in particular struggling in this regard,” Cookey said.
“A beautiful ancillary purpose of the platform is that we’re aggregating measurements for the historically under-represented people globally. As part of our work in digitising the custom clothing vertical, we are also building true standard sizing for under-represented people in fashion due to the ethnicity of their style.”
fitted was recently selected to participate in the Catalyst Jobtech Accelerator run by Mercy Corps and BFA Global, and has received funding from various other investors. Cookey said uptake has been strong since launch, with over 20,000 measurements collected from customers and thousands of outfits produced per month.
“We noticed a huge gap in the African fashion market. Customers struggle to get reliable quality products from fashion brands, and brands struggle to produce clothes to standard – especially given their smaller MOQs and difficulty in managing tailors and operations.”
“We currently have over tailors from 13 countries,” he said, adding those countries include India, Pakistan, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, the US and the UK.
“However, we are currently only running fulfillment operations in Nigeria. We have plans to expand to more countries in Africa and Asia and facilitate more of the cross border payment flows for fashion between global developed and emerging markets in the future.”
fitted makes money by taking a commission on each transaction that occurs on its platform. Cookey said, like any startup, fitted has encountered several difficulties in launching, including navigating the challenging operating environment in Nigeria.
“While we are a purely tech product, we also fulfill outfit production via our vetted tailor network which involves us in the logistics of fulfillment. While this has proved to be difficult, it has given us a unique competitive advantage by way of deep insight into the idiosyncrasies of fashion operations in Africa. This helps us build better products,” he said.
“We have been able to overcome these challenges through collaboration, resilience, and a relentless focus on our mission to digitise and revolutionise the fashion industry in Africa.”
