LA Startup Toli 360 Marketing Interactive Try-On Mirror Displays … For Home Use

July 6, 2022 by Dave Haynes

A small LA start-up called Toli 360 is marketing interactive full length bedroom mirrors as AI-driven shopping malls that would allow consumers to source and try on clothing at home – borrowing on what has mostly been a concept in retail for the last few years.

While there have indeed been flagship stores and stores-of-the-future that have installed interactive mirrors on the sales floor or in dressing rooms, it is reasonable to suggest adoption has been pretty low – likely owing to cost and complexity.

So now the idea is to put what are, in effect, interactive look-up and try-on screens in personal homes, presumably purchased by consumers.

The PR firm touting Toli 360 gets a hat tip and smirk from me for moxy – calling the product and service “the shopping innovation of the century.”

Hmmm …

Here’s the PR pitch:

Call it a Metaverse Shopping Mall. The Toli 360 is an artificial intelligence shopping mall housed in a life size mirror. Yup! You know that full length bedroom mirror you’ve got. Now imagine for a moment, it houses your personal, 3D, scaled avatar and all of your favorite clothing stores’ apparel. Picture yourself scrolling through store or designer names, choosing a clothing item and your personal avatar trying the garment on for you, as you watch and observe its fit. You then press a button to purchase the clothing item, 100% certain of its fit and look on your body. No more trying clothes on. No more guesstimating as you shop online.

The Toli 360 A.I. retail shopping mirror measures your body’s precise 3D dimensions from 360 degrees, creating an accurate 3D scaled model of YOU. You’ll be able to (virtually) try on clothing from your favorite retailers with scientific precision. You’ll look at your body wearing the clothes and see with complete accuracy how they look and fit your body.

The Toli 360 is the shopping innovation of the century. No more mishaps when you shop online or choose a no-try-on approach at your favorite clothing store. Your life size virtual avatar will be able to try on clothing for you, creating an exclusive, contactless shopping experience that is 100% accurate for every person, every time.

The company says its set-up takes 30 images of owners from 360 degrees, measuring the unique shape, build and dimensions. An exact 3D scaled model of your body is then uploaded into a cloud (in partnership with Oracle) that communicates with the Toli 360 shopping mirror. You will see your virtual 3D likeness appear on the mirror. The 360 process then actually puts clothing from popular retailers onto your body as if you are wearing them. You are the only one who owns your personal measurement data and personal avatar, and your information is never shared with retailers or other third parties.

Your complete 3D measurements are captured by Toli 360’s A.I. technology and stored for future shopping use. The Toli 360 is the only company capable of measuring your body in real time, as well as measuring the clothing to your body in real time. No one else can provide such precision.

Toli 360 has a pilot rollout going, it says, with 100 different clothing retailers across the U.S., and is “finalizing partnerships with two major holding companies that collectively have 30 retailers under their collective umbrellas.”

So they appear to be seeding the market – probably with free-to-the-retailer units – with the idea/aspiration that consumers will see these and want them in their walk-in closets or bedroom corners.

I dunno. Camera-based, AI-driven virtual try-on tech has come a very long way from the days when it was not much more than a virtual version of paper cutouts (boomers will remember paper cutouts) overlaying a video stream of people. It can now be quite slick and accurate, and the core idea of enabling consumers to kinda-sorta try things on is quite arguably a better experience than making decisions off a 6-inch smartphone screen.

But will people pay the money, which would almost certainly be north of $1,000 per unit? It might have a better shot at adoption if the units doubled up as exercise/fitness training mirrors, but those would tend to be used in locations other than a bedroom. I like the hardware play much more so inside retail stores if there is a clear ROI model, and the interactive is integrated into store business systems like inventory and pricing, and tied to operations (like a dispatch from the dressing room, asking staff to bring items in a different size or color).

The units have some sort of small digital signage screen above the main interactive screen, running what looks like brand promotions.

I don’t know how many people pop out of bed and start shopping for clothes, but that’s the premise with this promo video that shows the unit and user experience in action … I don’t make decisions without coffee in me, and I don’t want to see myself first thing either. Plus I’d absolutely trip or break a toe on that 360 pedestal thingie on the floor.

I can’t find a website for the company, which in poker terms would perhaps be what’s called a “tell” about the maturity of the company. But the video above would have cost some real money. This is the founder’s Linkedin profile.