Sneakerheads, leave your foot measuring tool underneath the benches of your favorite shoe store because Nike coming to save the day. The shoe company unveils a new approach to shoe shopping and fitting with an innovative technological scanning device.
Known as Nike Fit, it uses proprietary computer vision engineering to precisely scan customer’s feet with their phone camera. The app then uses 13 points of measurement to compare their foot with Nike’s entire footwear stock before recommending the best size for the Nike shoe for them. The development for Nike Fit has been in the works for the last year, with the official update coming in August 2019.
The technology will also appear in select Nike stores with built-in Nike Fit mats coming around the same time. The shoe brand hopes that the technological advances will “ensure better fitting shoes and enhanced performance for everyday athletes, a more streamlined shopping experience, and eventually it will advise Nike on how to make footwear moving forward.”
This is Nike’s next step in improving athletic performance in an ever-growing industry. Oftentimes customers have to order multiple sizes of a shoe to make sure it fits and return the sizes that don’t work out. That’s something Nike wants to alleviate by having customers having the right shoe at first sight.
“Fit is such a big friction point for our customers,” Michael Martin, Nike’s global head of digital products, tells CNBC. “We reached a point of realizing this was not just the biggest problem but biggest transformational opportunity that we have. … No matter how good the shoe is, if the foot doesn’t fit well within the shoe, you’re not going to get peak performance from it.”
No matter how Nike Fit adapts going forward, this will be a game-changer for sneaker wearers and shoe consumers in general.
