The Zozosuit takes 3D scans of one's body to aid in taking easier measurements.
When people think of wearable technology, they most likely think of an Apple Watch or Fitbit. AirPods too. Even Apple’s hotly-anticipated mixed-reality headset. These all are computers you wear on your body.
The Zozosuit from Zozofit takes wearable tech to another level. The $98 product, currently available only in the United States, looks a lot like a wetsuit and has the ability to help people take three-dimensional scans of their body. Like Apple Watch (and reportedly Apple’s headset), the Zozosuit works with a companion app, available on iOS and Android, that connects to the suit and does all the functional heavy lifting. The company describes the suit on its website as “the future of fitness” by helping users “take the guess work out of measurements.” The suit constructs a precise 3D scan of one’s body using images captured from different angles. Accuracy-wise, Zozofit says it’s “similar to a laser scanner and can achieve this level of accuracy repeatedly, which eliminates the potential for human error while measuring.” Zozofit caveats that there’s a “margin of error of [one quarter] of an inch” depending upon where a measurement is located on a person’s body.
“Zozofit is providing access to a whole new view to how we can view our body transformation,” said Madeleine Kanazawa, vice president of marketing at Zozofit, in an interview conducted by email earlier this month. “People are frustrated with the scale—especially when they feel the number on the scale does not represent how they feel. What Zozofit shows, is a new measure of fit by providing a a top to bottom analysis of how your body has shaped up from scan to scan.”
Kanazawa continued: “Health and technology go hand-in-hand with the Zozosuit. The Zozosuit technology is designed to support consumers’ everyday health and wellness goals. It’s wearable technology tracking consistent data of your body that showcases your progress. They work in tandem to provide you unique insights and create a support system for your journey by setting and reaching goals.”
The Zozosuit is different than typical wearable devices insofar as health tech is really its bread and butter. Whereas Apple Watch is a more general purpose product—essentially, it’s a satellite for the iPhone—with health-tracking capabilities, the Zozosuit exists only to help track a person’s fitness. From a disability perspective, the Zozosuit’s app can be an assistive technology in itself in terms of making it more accessible to set up and maintain. It’s also true that leveraging technology to manage things such as weight and measurements can be more accessible for many disabled people than traditional methods. In other words, whether the Zozosuit is accessible to someone comes down not necessarily to the suit—though the ergonomics of getting it on and off certainly matter—but rather how a person interacts with the data.
Kanazawa acknowledged the accessibility gains of the Zozosuit, telling me it can take measurements in ten key areas in less than two minutes. “Try measuring these areas at the same amount of time with a measuring tape, and consistently at the same position. It’s tough,” she said. “Users trust every time they are scanning with Zozofit they will be shown consistent measurements and trends of how they are shaping up.”
For Michaela Witter, the Zozosuit’s promise resonated with her in navigating her fitness journey. Witter found herself in the health and fitness industry when, in 2017, she reached her highest weight upon moving to Los Angeles. The turning point for Witter occurred when she discovered the Mexican root tejocote and subsequently lost fifty pounds. Nowadays, Witter is an Instagram influencer who, with her supplement business, helps others who struggle to shed weight. “I have the pleasure of sharing my success with others who have struggled to lose weight. I feel very blessed to have the career that I do now,” Witter said.
She discovered the Zozosuit when a mutual friend introduced her to the product in a partnership opportunity. Witter told me the suit “definitely makes my life easier” as someone who takes her own measurements, and recommends it to anyone who wants to take charge of tracking their body’s changes. She explained technology has helped “elevate” her business in myriad ways, from building her online storefront to education to of course tracking her health. “Zozofit is a perfect example of unlocking efficiencies as it relieves the user from having to manually take measurements,” she said about using the suit. “Additionally, it enables access to tools like body fat composition, something that previously required expensive tools to measure.”
Andrew Coleman Smith is similarly enthusiastic to Witter not merely about the Zozofit, but of the ways in which technology enables him to live a fuller, healthier lifestyle. In an interview with me over email, the YouTuber said he posts videos to his channel every Tuesday in a series he calls “Fat Tuesdays” wherein he documents his own fitness journey. "I’m just a regular guy trying to lose weight, get healthy, and become what I refer to as a ’Fitness Person’,” he said of his channel’s focus.
Also like Witter, technology plays an integral role in chronicling Smith’s fitness journey. He’s an avid Apple Watch wearer, as well as an avid user of a connected scale, thermometer, blood pressure monitor, and even urine analysis strips. As for the ZOZOSUIT, Smith explained he first heard about the product in 2019; he was a fan before the company eventually shut down and relaunched last year in its current incarnation. “Zozofit is a key component of my fitness tech arsenal,” he said. “I’ve seen progress with the suit I was missing on the scale alone. For example, the day after a hard workout, my muscles can experience inflammation, which shows on the scale as an increase—which could be discouraging, but seeing my body [comparison] in 3D brings me back reality and shows [me the] progress I was missing!”
Smith posted a video sharing his experience with the Zozosuit.
“We’ve been finding that the application of our product has been very diverse,” Kanazawa said of the Zozosuit’s appeal. “While originally intended to help solve the problem of ill-fitting clothing and the pivot to providing a view of the overall shape for fitness and weight loss journeys, our users are applying our data and technology into various ways.”
Looking towards the future, Zozofit is steadfastly committed in continuing to empower people to become the best version of themselves—which, apropos of May being Mental Health Awareness Month, works wonders in engendering positive mental health. Kanazawa told me the company is encouraged by all the positive feedback since they relaunched last August, adding there are a number of enhancements in the product pipeline. The company is working on integrating the Zozosuit with Apple’s HealthKit APIs, making the suit even easier to use as Apple’s framework collates a trove of data. In addition, there’s work being done on a new feature for the app called ColorMetric that, Kanazawa said, “will provide a comprehensive and visually striking solution for tracking and analyzing body shape transformations.”
The ColorMetric uses color gradients to help distinguish user progress.
The feature uses a variety of colors in comparing body scans and uses them in a gradient system to indicate changes. According to Kanazawa, users can easily spot growth areas with color intensity she said is “directly proportional” to the percentage of change between scans. “As the amount of change or delta increases, so does the color intensity, providing clear visual guidance for areas experiencing significant transformations,” she said in describing how ColorMetric works. “This intuitive, color-based approach simplifies the assessment of your body shape progress, making it engaging and straightforward.”
Beyond the technical details, Kanazawa pointed to the company’s partnerships with the athletics department at the University of Southern California, as well as private trainers and gyms. “We hope to continue to working with thought leaders to be a must-need tool for providing metrics quickly and accurately,” she said of the company’s future plans.
Projecting the long-term, it’s safe to say Zozofit is more optimistic about its future potential than, for instance, Google was with its interesting-yet-recently-discontinued Jacquard initiative with Levi’s.
“What I’m most excited about these early stages of Zozofit is that future use case is undefined,” Kanazawa said of Zozofit’s future. “Since Zozofit was created from consumer feedback and requests, we welcome the additional feedback and insights from all.”
