Online cloth­ing stores are not earn­ing their pro­por­tion of wom­en’s cloth­ing sales due to one obsta­cle and Fovo may have the answer that could change wom­en’s shop­ping behav­ior forever.

Online com­merce is clear­ly becom­ing the pref­er­ence for a grow­ing per­cent­age of the world, as is evi­denced by the suc­cess of com­pa­nies such as Ama­zon, Aliba­ba, and many oth­ers that include both a lit­tle of every­thing — such as the afore­men­tioned ‘vir­tu­al malls’ — and very spe­cif­ic offer­ings, such as shoes from Zap­pos. The lat­ter is a bit sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing how com­mon it is to try shoes on and walk in them before deter­min­ing whether the brand, style, and size are the right fit. There’s almost noth­ing worse than spend­ing a day walk­ing around in poor­ly fit­ting shoes.

Why Don’t Online Clothing Stores Do as Well?

As pop­u­lar as all of these options are, shop­ping at online cloth­ing stores is still a lag­ging indi­ca­tor when it comes to wom­en’s e‑commerce. It seems that about 70% of women still pre­fer to shop for their clothes in a phys­i­cal store so that they can try them on and see how they feel and what they look like on their bod­ies before com­mit­ting cash to the trans­ac­tion. There’s real­ly a good rea­son for this, although it’s only recent­ly being rec­og­nized and see­ing solu­tions arise — size is a poor indi­ca­tor of fit.

Big or small bust­ed? Junk in the trunk or a rear end like a plank? Wide hips or a stick fig­ure? These are all legit­i­mate dif­fer­en­tia­tors, yet which of them work with a size 5 or a size 11? There’s no way way to know with­out actu­al­ly try­ing the clothes on, or so you would think any­way. But Kiana Anvaripour begs to dif­fer with you, and she’s out to prove this — and to bring online appar­el sales up to speed — with a new com­pa­ny called Fovo.

Giving Women a Better Way to Measure their Clothes

Fovo takes a dif­fer­ent spin on shop­ping for wom­en’s cloth­ing at online cloth­ing stores. It’s not about size, it’s about shape. Fovo isn’t the first attempt to alter the shape of online appar­el shop­ping (for­give the pun) and isn’t even the first attempt from Anvaripour, who launched a dress line for dModaine in 2010 which turned into design­ing shape­ware the next year. Her exten­sive career in fash­ion design includes stints with very high end lines such as Roland Mouret and Madame V.

Fovo uses an algo­rithm that was 2 years in the mak­ing for deter­min­ing brands and sizes that will fit a shop­per based on a series of ques­tions such as “What is your favorite body part to show off? (Cleav­age, legs, back, arms, or bum?) What do you wear on any giv­en Mon­day? Sat­ur­day? Based on the answers, the web­site give shop­pers a prod­uct assort­ment from over 300 retail­ers, from H&M to Neiman Mar­cus to For­ev­er 21, which can be fil­tered down based on budget.

Fovo also fol­lows the cur­rent trend to lose the ‘plus size’ stig­ma, offer­ing sizes from 00 to 32. But the actu­al size is sec­ondary. The focus is one find­ing the right fit for your shape, and so far Fovo appears to have an ear­ly and suc­cess­ful start to what may become the future of online clothes shop­ping. Media Jobs thinks this com­pa­ny, or any sim­i­lar jobs in ecom­merce ven­ture that looks as promis­ing, is prob­a­bly worth a look. We also still think that uncom­fort­able shoes are horrible.