An algorithm for bras online

last updated 8 January 2015

Selling well-fitting bras via the Internet would seem to be “the Everest of online retail challenges,” said Randall Stross in The New York Times. But now e-commerce allows products “once thought of as unsuitable for sale online”—from shoes and eyeglasses to lingerie—to be custom-ordered. One San Francisco company, True&Co, offers women a Web-based questionnaire to help them find the right bra using “an algorithm that defines 2,000 body types.” The algorithm selects several bras, which are sent to the customer to try on at home. Other professional bra fitters have also moved online, allowing customers to submit their own measurements and work with customer service representatives by phone to find the right fit. But it’s not a perfect science. Sometimes, one bra fitter said, there’s just “no way of figuring it out over the phone.”