Bold Metrics, a tech company that helps online shoppers select clothes that fit properly and reduce costly returns for retailers, just got something that they certainly won’t be sending back: $8 million in Series A financing.

• The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Also participating: Lytical Ventures, ValueStream Ventures, and Nanban Ventures.
• The new $$, which brings the company’s total funding to $12.3 million, will be used, in part, to boost its R&D.

Sizing up customers: Bold Metrics uses data from 45+ million scans of body models (with more than 2 million added quarterly), which encompasses complete measurements as well as weight and age.

• Based on that data, when a shopper enters just a few details—often the five specifics of age, weight, height, waist size, and shoe size—the startup uses what it calls AI Body Modeling technology to create a 3D avatar of the shopper, and predict what size would fit best.
• It works with retailers like Canada Goose, workwear brand Truewerk, and Men’s Wearhouse (more on that below).

Tale of the tape

Morgan Linton, Bold Metric’s COO, co-founded the company with CEO Daina Burnes in 2017. He told Retail Brew that its proof of concept occurred that same year, when it was hired by Men’s Wearhouse to participate in a sort of man-versus-machine contest.

The men’s clothing chain, which was founded nearly 50 years ago in Houston, has a tuxedo-rental service that had relied solely on in-store tailors to measure customers. But with customers increasingly buying online, how would they approximate that tailor in their living rooms?

Men’s Wearhouse “ended up being split,” Linton recalled. “Half the company was like, ‘You know what, we should just send customers measuring tapes in the mail, and they’ll measure themselves and, hey, that’s what we’ve been doing in stores, great.’ And the other half of the company was like, ‘Come on, technology has to have solved this.’ And so it was essentially us versus the tape measure.”

Pity whoever was betting on the tape measure. Customers who ordered tuxedo rentals using the tape were three times more likely to return them than those who answered those basic specifics from Bold Metrics, according to Linton.

“They actually took the tape-measure option off of their site and just had two options,” Linton continued. “Go to a store, or get fitted using Bold Metrics.”

• In the six years since Bold Metrics has been the exclusive measuring option for Men’s Wearhouse’s online tuxedo rentals, returns have been reduced by 27.4%, per Linton.

Click here to read more.—AAN

On Friday, Fashionphile will open a 60,000-square-foot authentication center and showroom in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood. At a given time, it’ll be home to ~15,000 luxury handbags and accessories and includes a photo studio, eight procurement offices, and an authentication center where Fashionphile’s team makes sure products are legit to put back on the market.

Fashionphile, founded in 1999 as an eBay store, is a vet in the luxury resale space.

“One of the reasons we’re able to stay so consistent and diligent and really focus is because we didn’t have any investors until 2019,” founder Sarah Davis told Retail Brew. “I felt like a lot of competitors potentially had pressure from investors to grow so fast, take more brands, take more types of products—we just didn’t want to do that.”

• In 2019, Neiman Marcus acquired a minority stake in Fashionphile, making it the department store’s official re-commerce partner.

Quick service: At the showroom, sellers can make an appointment, walk in with a handbag (for example), and leave with $$$ within 20 minutes, Davis explained. Using a pricing algorithm, historical data, and a luxury pricing index, the company can determine the value of an item given its retail price, sale frequency, and condition.

“We need to be able to give you a fair and fast offer that’s accurate and we can only do that if we know with specificity what that is,” Davis said. “So once we identify it accurately then we can give you that accurate price.”

The expansion marks the company’s first corporate presence in New York City (though it opened a selling studio on Madison Avenue in 2018).

• Carlsbad, California, is home to Fashionphile’s 30,000-square-foot showroom and authentication center.

Hoping lightning strikes twice: Given that a lot of trips to Fashionphile’s Carlsbad location are planned ahead of time, Davis noted that about 78% of customers end up leaving with “something in their hand.” Fashionphile’s sales grew 107% YoY in 2021, she added, despite competition in resale heating up in recent years.

“We kind of figured out who we were in the beginning and we never were tempted to veer from that meaning,” Davis said. “We’re ultra-luxury accessory sellers. And that’s all we do.”—KM

Today’s top retail reads.

New capital: Why Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood has become a draw for DTC brands, from Allbirds to Warby Parker, looking to open stores. (Retail Dive)

Second look: Digital fashion designers are making millions in the metaverse, catching the attention of IRL luxury brands. (Vogue Business)

Meat your match: It may be the “vegan gold rush,” but when it comes to taste, many plant-based brands have a lot of work to do. (Vox)

So, what’s new in tech? Want more of the latest news at the intersection of tech and retail? Emerging Tech Brew covers all the latest happenings, trends, and changes hitting the tech world, all in one place. Sign up here.

The numbers you need to know.

Amazon is seeing an “escalating injury crisis” across its delivery system, per a new report from labor-union coalition Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) that analyzed injury data that Amazon and its delivery partners shared with OSHA. Among its findings:

• Nearly one in five Amazon delivery service partner (DSP) drivers were injured on the job in 2021, up 38% YoY. Delivery-station workers’ injury rates saw a 15% YoY rise, while the rate for sortation-center employees increased 20%.
• Serious injuries for Amazon delivery workers—characterized as injuries that keep a worker from carrying out normal job functions or off the job altogether—rose across DSP drivers (47%), and workers in sortation (24%) and delivery stations (12%).

By comparison: SOC’s report also found that injury rates were 13% higher than non-Amazon couriers and delivery workers.

• While Amazon doesn’t submit injury data for its 2,000 DSPs, which account for 115,000 jobs, SOC reported that those who submitted information to OSHA accrued injuries at an average rate ~2.5x that of their peers.

In a comment to CNBC, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel challenged the study, saying that it “cherry-picks data from less than 10% of our delivery partners to tell an inaccurate and misleading story” and that the company is rolling out new tech to improve safety.

• Worker safety was also brought up at Amazon’s shareholder meeting this week (Andy Jassy’s first as CEO).

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• How Chipotle is experimenting with BeReal, Gen Z’s new favorite social platform
• Will more retailers start charging shoppers for online returns?
• Tools of the trade: the story behind the cash register