The Perfit solution to in-store shopping

From left: Tre Plowman, Jason Fordham and Casey Reagan

It all started at American Eagle in Circle Center Mall. Jason Fordham’s wife was trying on jeans.

As is the popular question for most issues now-a-days, Jason wondered if there was an app that made the fitting room experience less cumbersome.

Different size? Different brand? Shoes to go with those jeans? Jewelry?

And so, the Perfit solution started to form.

Jason brought back his idea to a few of his coworkers at the time, Casey Reagan, Jamal Khan and Tre Plowman.

“We wanted this to be a consumer-driven product,” Fordham said. “That’s the one thing that’s consistent. No matter if people shop online or in-stores, they want to own the experience from start to finish.”

Despite being an avid Amazon user, he said he finds himself in stores more than online.

“While e-commerce gets all the press, brick-and-mortar still drives the bottom line,” Fordham said.

The original idea was to have a fitting room concierge-like app that would first give recommendations to shoppers for different sizes, styles and brands. It would also show what products are available in store, including product info, ratings, and reviews. Then, their selections would be sent to an associate.

This idea has expanded into an app that is searchable across stores. Say you want Lucky jeans in a size 8, Perfit will find all the different stores that hold them in whatever radius you tell it.

Plowman did the coding magic to make this app a reality.

“I like how much I’ve been able to learn both on the business-side and technical,” he said. “We’ve even started working with augmented reality and machine learning.”

All four guys have been developers at one point in their careers and they have combined their love of tech and business.

“Just seeing the idea build and grow into something that is actually usable to individual shoppers and retailers is very exciting,” Reagan said.

Reagan added that the Fashion Mall has over 90 apps for 50 different stores.

“We want to see that be consolidated and create a more general purpose in the mobile experience,” he said.

They will be officially launching in June and are currently in their seed funding stage. Fordham, Reagan and Khan have worked in Indy over 15 years and Plowman worked with them as an intern while they worked at SmarterHQ. They picked Zionsville and zWORKS because of the centralized location for them and also the number of retailers in downtown Zionsville.

“When you shop, I want Perfit to be the app you open,” Fordham said.

For more information, head to their website.

Getting to know Perfit…

• Jason is a renowned cheesecake baker. He makes 32 different flavors, the most popular of which is his Cookie Dough Cheescake.
• Casey is the Indiana State Champion of a boardgame called Dimension. He won at Who’s Yer Con after never having played before and will go to regionals in St. Louis this weekend.
• Tre walked on to the Jiao Tong University football team while he was studying abroad in China only to go on to win a national championship.
• Jamal is a former regional champion of the Blockbuster World Video Game Championships (and limited to only Regional Champion since he was unable to attend the national championships due to a scheduling conflict)