The most climate-friendly garment is the one you don't ship back. That simple, unglamorous unit of analysis is the engine for a small, quiet cohort of startups trying to fix online apparel shopping. The Fitting Room, a Toronto-based company founded in 2019, sits in this niche. Its pitch is straightforward: use a smartphone to build a hyper-realistic 3D avatar of yourself, then see how clothes will actually fit before you buy them [The Fitting Room website, retrieved 2024]. If it works, the company isn't just selling a nicer shopping experience. It's selling a reduction in diesel miles and landfill tonnage, one accurate size prediction at a time.
A wedge into the returns pipeline
The company offers a suite of tools,size recommendation, virtual try-on, and a patent-pending made-to-fit system for custom garments [The Fitting Room website, retrieved 2024]. The core of the bet is the avatar. By asking a user to spin in front of their phone camera, the software constructs a 3D model that can drape digital garments with a claimed degree of realism. For brands, the value proposition splits in two. The first is the immediate reduction in return rates, a direct cost saver. The second, more speculative, is the ability to shift some inventory to a made-to-order model, theoretically cutting down on the overproduction that plagues fast fashion. It's a classic climate tech play: find an inefficiency with a clear financial cost (returns) and solve it in a way that also happens to cut emissions.
The team and the early capital
Leadership includes co-founders Kirill Moisyeyev, listed as CEO post-pivot, and Nathan Huntoon as CTO, alongside Niall Cottrell leading 3D and digital fashion technology [Prospeo, retrieved 2024]. The pivot note is instructive; this is a five-year-old company that has likely iterated on its approach. They have navigated to a seed round of $500,000, though the lead investor is not publicly named [Fitting - 2025 Funding Rounds & List of Investors - Tracxn, retrieved 2026]. It's a modest war chest for a problem that has burned through far larger sums. The competitive field includes other virtual try-on players like Perfitly and Where and Share, but the space is fragmented, with no dominant winner yet [NC State Textiles, January 2024].
| Role | Name | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Co-Founder & CEO (Post Pivot) | Kirill Moisyeyev | Leadership spans pre- and post-pivot phases [ZoomInfo, retrieved 2026] |
| Co-Founder & CTO | Nathan Huntoon | Based in Frisco [Nathan Huntoon - The Fitting Room |
| Director, 3D & Digital Fashion Tech | Niall Cottrell | Key technical leadership [Niall Cottrell - The Fitting Room, retrieved 2026] |
Where the fit has to be perfect
The risks here are not subtle. The technology for photorealistic virtual try-on is notoriously difficult, balancing computational load, user friction, and accuracy. A tool that is merely fun to use but doesn't actually prevent returns is a feature, not a business. Furthermore, the company's public traction is opaque. There are no cited brand customers or deployment numbers in the available record, which makes it hard to gauge if the product works at scale. The business model, selling to apparel brands (B2B2C), requires enterprise sales chops and deep integration into e-commerce stacks,a different game than consumer app development.
- Technical fidelity. The difference between a neat visual effect and a true fit predictor is vast. The algorithm must understand fabric drape, stretch, and cut, not just map a texture onto a shape.
- Commercial proof. The absence of named brand partners after five years is the single biggest question mark. Enterprise buyers in retail need case studies with hard return-on-investment data.
- Market education. The virtual fitting room category is gaining awareness, but it still requires convincing brands to invest in a pre-purchase solution rather than just optimizing their returns logistics [NC State Textiles, January 2024].
The math, however, is compelling if they can crack it. Apparel returns are a massive carbon source. If a mid-sized brand doing $100 million in online sales has a 25% return rate, and The Fitting Room's tool cuts that by just a third, you're looking at preventing tens of thousands of return shipments annually. That's a tangible, if indirect, climate impact. The company's ultimate competitor isn't another virtual try-on startup. It's the entrenched inertia of the current system, where accepting a 20-30% return rate is often just baked into the cost of doing business online. To win, The Fitting Room doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be more economically efficient than the dumpster.
Sources
- [The Fitting Room website, retrieved 2024] Company homepage and product claims | https://www.thefittingroom.tech
- [Prospeo, retrieved 2024] Company profile with team listings | https://prospeo.io/c/the-fitting-room
- [NC State Textiles, January 2024] What is a Virtual Fitting Room? Advantages and Early Adopters | https://textiles.ncsu.edu/news/2024/01/what-is-a-virtual-fitting-room-advantages-and-early-adopters/
- [Fitting - 2025 Funding Rounds & List of Investors - Tracxn, retrieved 2026] Funding round information | https://tracxn.com/d/companies/fitting/__6R7KJVvEso__AUPQw7gws1d0rZn_1gNKibHef4sfujo/funding-and-investors
- [ZoomInfo, retrieved 2026] Kirill Moisyeyev profile | https://www.zoominfo.com/c/the-fitting-room/556324207
- [Nathan Huntoon - The Fitting Room | LinkedIn, retrieved 2026] LinkedIn profile | https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-huntoon-2b965857/
- [Niall Cottrell - The Fitting Room, retrieved 2026] LinkedIn profile | https://nl.linkedin.com/in/niallcottrell