New Site’s Algorithm Promises Bra Shoppers a Perfect Fit

It’s cold, you’re in a room with unflattering fluorescent lights and a full-length mirror, and a stranger wants to wrap your bust in measuring tape. That’s what buying a bra is usually like.
A startup called True & Co has a different experience in mind.
Its founders spent two months visiting San Francisco bra sellers, enduring near-daily bra fittings, in order to distill the process of fitting a bra down to an online survey. Their website, which launched on Wednesday, asks women to answer questions such as “What is the style of your best-fitting bra?” and “Does your bra hurt?” instead of taking out a measuring tape.
The site then recommends a handful of styles from its collection of more than 200 bras and asks users to pick three. It picks two more for them based on an algorithm and, after asking for a $45 refundable deposit, ships them the box of five brassieres. Women keep what they want and send back what they don’t. Shipping is free, and True & Co adjusts future recommendations based on what worked and what didn’t.
Online bra shopping is not an easy code to crack, and — aside from one other startup that fits bras based on women’s favorites — its’ not a niche that many entrepreneurs have attempted to fill.
“The bra is a complex garment that has 20 different components,” says True & Co co-founder Michelle Lam. “They are fit on models…if you are a woman that doesn’t look like that fit model, the bra won’t fit.”
A woman’s size can, for instance, vary between two styles from the same brand because they were fit on different models. True & Co’s algorithm will translate the difference.
Lam says that during the startup’s private beta, 500 women who took the survey on average said that three of the five bras fit them (if you have ever bought a bra, you will recognize this as a small miracle).
“The footwear market is almost double the size [of the intimate apparel market], and women enjoy shopping for shoes,” Lam says. “What potential could this be if women actually enjoyed the experience?”