Lingerie Startup Uses Big Data to Engineer the World’s Best Bra

Michelle Lam. Photo: Courtesy of TrueCo

When Victoria’s Secret wants to promote new products, it sends the “angels”–that stunning band of supermodels–strutting down a catwalk wearing glittery wings, stiletto heels, and not much else. And Calvin Klein takes much the same tack, putting up giant black and white billboards graced by oil-slick models lounging moodily in all manner of suggestive poses, abs a-blazing. In the lingerie industry, the old marketing trope is true: sex sells. But Michelle Lam hopes that data can sell too.

Lam is the founder and CEO of TrueCo, a San Francisco-based e-commerce startup that helps women find the right bra for their bodies using data science. Each TrueCo customer takes a two-minute quiz about her body before buying a bra. Then, much like Netflix does with TV and movies, TrueCo shows each shopper bras from a variety of brands that are a good fit for her based on the quiz. Since the company launched in 2012, TrueCo has collected some 7 million data points on their customers, from details about different breast shapes to what percentage of women experience strap slippage. Now, having successfully sold products from other designers, the company is officially launching its own line of lingerie that’s been specially infused with data. It’s a move that could have implications far beyond the world of bras and panties.

Data is the thing that allows many of the world’s biggest companies to do what they do. It powers Google search, Facebook ads, and Amazon recommendations. But while we’re accustomed to online services collecting information on us and using it to tailor their websites to our tastes, when it comes to physical goods, we take what we can get. Sure, retailers can do market research to predict trends, but at the end of a season, they’re invariably left with a clearance rack full of once promising products that turned out to be duds. TrueCo is part of a growing group of startups that’s using data to make physical products a better fit for their customers. “With all this virtual stuff, it’s so easy to create a uniquely personal experience for every person,” says Lam, “but creating physical goods that also feel like they’re made for you is what’s incredibly fascinating to me.”

The problem Lam is trying to solve is the fact that most women are wearing the wrong bras. The straps slip, the bands pinch, and the cups, well, runneth over. That’s not, Lam says, because all bras are ill-fitting. It’s because all women are different. TrueCo’s software has found some 6,000 different body types and counting in its customer pool. Finding the right bra could involve hours in a dressing room, if not trips to different stores, so most women settle not on a bra that fits well, but one that fits well enough. Lam, who was an investor at Bain Capital Ventures before launching TrueCo, knew this process could be improved with technology.

Some of TrueCo’s new line. Image: Courtesy of TrueCo

TrueCo’s new line of lingerie, which includes bras, panties, and loungewear, is based on an entirely new fitting system for bras called TrueSpectrum. Unlike traditional bra sizes, which only account for the size of a woman’s rib cage and the distance between her breasts, TrueSpectrum sizes take into account whether her breasts are full or shallow, high or low, wide-set, or a combination of a few. The bras, themselves, have then been designed to address the most common complaints reported in the quiz. For instance, 62 percent of women complain about “busting out,” particularly in their underarms. So, TrueCo designed a bra with a high-cut spandex band to prevent that from happening.

The company launched a pilot test of four different bras last fall, which soon became one of the company’s best selling products. Those bras now account for more than a quarter of TrueCo’s sales and have helped grow revenue 600 percent in just a few months. Lam is hoping to replicate those results with this new line. “We don’t create anything that’s not going to sell because it’s not going to fit anyone,” says Lam. “We create less waste.”

Novel as TrueCo’s approach may be, the company does have competition. One startup, ThirdLove, allows women to take their measurements at home with a body scanning technology app. And recently, even Victoria’s Secret began offering customers a quiz on its website. That other brands are catching on comes as no surprise to Lam. “I look at the old retailers out there, and I see an imperfect model,” she says. “I think this is the way women are going to shop for intimate apparel in the future, and not only that, but I really believe this is the way women will shop for all apparel in the future.”

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