H&M's Weekday brand tests out custom-made jeans

Weekday, a Swedish denim and fashion brand owned by the H&M Group, is piloting a new program to offer custom-made jeans. The program utilizes emerging technologies through the company's innovation hub The Laboratory to create products with unique sizes and fits at affordable prices.

"We always have our customers at the heart of everything we do, so the purpose of this pilot was both to understand what they want from a custom-made denim product, what they think about the new experience and to test the readiness of the technologies. The pilot enabled us to gain invaluable insights that we simply couldn’t get from just testing internally," explained Laura Coppen, sustainable and circular business developer of The Laboratory, in a statement.

Through the pilot, 100 customers were invited to trial the technology and provide insights on the service. Customers were body-scanned and then offered customization options to design a unique pair of jeans, which were produced and delivered within ten days using H&M's partner factories. Once the final products were delivered, the customers returned for a fitting and determined whether they liked the fit and comfort level.

H&M Group partners with Unspun

Results determined an 80 percent satisfaction rate among participants, surpassing the company's goal of a 65 percent satisfaction rate.

The H&M Group partnered with Unspun to facilitate this pilot. The venture-backed robotics and apparel company created an algorithm for delivering a perfect fit for custom-made jeans. The algorithm converts the body scan into a paper pattern and measurement list that is production ready.

"I’m an optimist but I had some skepticism on how all the pieces of the puzzle of this model would fit together as we go live," Coppen added. "Therefore, I’m really happy to see that the result outperformed our expectations. Due to the positive result we will scale the pilot to an in-store experience. We will likely have more styles and other features based on the customers feedback."

Photo Credits:Weekday Facebook/ H&M website