Snap Doubles Down on Augmented Reality Try-On With a Host of New Shopping Features

Retailers have been increasingly turning to augmented reality as a way for consumers to try on products remotely, especially as the pandemic has made the prospect of visiting a physical fitting room potentially dicier at times. Much of these efforts have focused on categories like makeup, shoes and sunglasses, where this technology is somewhat easier to implement than apparel. Clothing, with its folds, different body positions and unwieldy phone camera angles, has presented bigger challenges for retailers attempting to render it in three-dimensional graphic form. Snap is aiming to change that with a host of new shopping features being revealed at its annual Snap Partner Summit today. The social platform will add a suite of tools for businesses that includes an asset manager, which makes it easier to translate products into AR models, a builder for turning those models into ads or filters, and image processing tech. While Snap has already offered such services in certain categories like makeup, these new tools will notably span the whole gamut of fashion products. Retailers American Eagle, Rains, Birdy Grey and Amsale are signed on as launch partners. To make these functions easy to find, the Snapchat app will feature a new tab in its lenses hub called Dress Up that will collect try-on filters from brands and creators. The company will also offer a software developer kit for retailers to create AR try-on features to host on their own websites or apps, which Puma has already put into use for some of its shoes. American Eagle is using Snap's new tools. "Apparel is the largest ecommerce vertical, and the one that suffers from the highest return rate," Carolina Arguelles Navas, global AR product strategy and product marketing lead, told Adweek. "But apparel has been really hard to drive with AR try-on. ... It's made AR try-on [feel] a bit inaccessible for businesses because it just didn't seem like it was good business sense." Navas cited a number of reasons that make clothing a difficult prospect for AR. One is the number of different folds and dynamic angles in a clothing item that have to be rendered in a 3D model. Another is the body tracking and conceptualizing needed to realistically superimpose that item on the wearer's figure. Snap claims to have cracked that code in a way that will make it easier for businesses to master these processes themselves. "That's really why we've been so invested in and so excited about this new technology we're launching for apparel called AR image technology," Navas said. "It takes the images [retailers] already have on their ecommerce website, processes them and allows them to simulate what that trend looks like across every single user selfie—no matter their body type, no matter their height, we can automatically understand and render that experience." The announcement comes on the heels of earnings report this week that showed Snap's AR ad business growing rapidly, with revenue from its overall dynamic ads category tripling year-over-year. The platform has also been encouraged by cases studies across various eyewear and makeup lenses it's rolled out in the last few months, which have managed to drive significant engagement for brands like Zenni, Ulta and MAC. Snap is hoping these new tools will help it replicate that success across all fashion ecommerce categories.