Virtual Try-On for Made-to-Measure and Custom Clothing Stores

Made-to-measure has a neat selling point: the garment is cut for you. It also has an awkward one. The customer has to commit to a style, a fabric and a price before they see anything made.

Does a made-to-measure store need virtual try-on?

Not for the fit itself. A tape measure and a good size form beat any photo. But custom orders are usually non-returnable, so the shopper's biggest worry is choosing the wrong style, not the wrong size.

That is the gap a preview fills. The shopper uploads a photo and sees your sample garment on their own frame, before paying for something cut to order.

Picture a customer weighing a navy jacket against a charcoal one. The tailor can explain the cut for ten minutes, but the customer mostly wants to know what it looks like on them. A preview answers that in under a minute, and it does so before you have spent an hour on a pattern.

It also cuts down on the awkward fitting room verdict. Nobody enjoys being told by a tailor, to their face, that the style they picked is not their best look.

Where does a try-on preview help a custom clothing shop?

• Style choice: a double breasted jacket looks very different on a narrow build than on a broad one, and few shoppers know which suits them.
• Length and proportion: jacket length, trouser break and shirt hem are easier to judge on a real photo than on a catalogue model.
• Confidence to start: a shopper who has seen the style on themselves is more likely to book the fitting.
• Remote customers: if you take orders online or across cities, a preview stands in for the showroom visit.

An enquiry that never turns into a fitting is a quiet loss. Nobody files a complaint about it, they just stop replying.

Where does it not help?

Be straight with customers about the limits. A preview is built from a photo of the shopper and a photo of your garment. It does not read their measurements, so it cannot tell them whether a custom cut will fit.

• Exact fit: your measurements decide this, not the preview.
• Fabric feel and weight: these stay on your product page and in your swatches.
• Custom details: monograms, lining colours and special buttons will not match every personal choice.
• Fabric choice: the preview shows the sample you photographed, so a different cloth will look different.

Say this on the page. A preview described as a style guide earns trust. One described as a fit guarantee earns a refund request. If sizing is your bigger problem, our guide to virtual try-on for petite and tall sizing covers how proportion shows up in a preview.

What should you photograph for a made-to-order range?

Each style needs one clean sample, since the preview works from that image. Make the sample the garment you want customers to picture.

• Photograph the finished sample on a mannequin or flat, with the full garment in frame.
• Use even light and a plain background so the edges are clear.
• Button or close the garment the way you want it shown.
• Shoot one hero fabric per style rather than every cloth you offer.

The full checklist is in our guide to photographing clothing for virtual try-on.

How should a custom store roll it out?

1. Choose your three most enquired styles, such as a jacket, a shirt and a trouser.
2. Photograph one sample of each to the checklist above.
3. Run them through the live demo with a few different photos and drop anything that renders badly.
4. Add the block to those product pages in the theme editor with the Corlen Shopify app. It needs an Online Store 2.0 theme. Showroom visitors can use the same preview on a tablet through the in-store kiosk.
5. Add a line near the button: style preview only, fit comes from your measurements.

Then watch whether more enquiries become booked fittings, using the steps in how to measure virtual try-on results. When you are ready, try Corlen on your own photo and see what your customer would see.