Hello and welcome (or welcome back) to Inc.’s 1 Smart Business Story.
Today: John Imah’s SpreeAI, the company fulfilling retail’s longstanding dream of virtual try-on technology. On January 11, the National Retail Federation’s annual trade show starts. For eons, companies have used Retail’s Big Show to showcase “smart mirrors” and other try-on tech to solve one of apparel’s biggest, most challenging issues: showing people how outfits really look on them to drive sales and reduce returns.
Imah isn’t the only player in this sector, but unlike some of his larger rivals (like Google), he’s purely a fashion-tech company. And with nearly $100 million raised and a $1.5 billion valuation, he’s got capital to compete. Read on to discover:
What Imah does to make an outsized impression when he meets with potential fashion partners
How SpreeAI works and why it’s “no different than OpenAI,” as Imah says, “but focused specifically on shopping”
Why upstart fashion brands such as Sergio Hudson and Kai Collective have chosen SpreeAI
What’s the funniest story you have of buying something online that looked perfect and then trying it on at home to discover you’d made a terrible mistake? Email me at [email protected] and let me know.
This Startup’s AI Product Is Changing the Way We Buy Clothes
SpreeAI’s virtual try-on tech helps a growing list of fashion brands drive sales and reduce returns.
BY ROB VERGER, SENIOR EDITOR
Spree AI founder, John Imah. Photography by Nathan Bajar
The best way to understand John Imah is to take a close look at the lavender Sergio Hudson-designed ensemble he wore to the Met Gala this year. Imah, who is the co-founder and CEO of SpreeAI, wore a custom double-breasted suit paired with an overcoat covered in embroidery designed to look like computer circuits. Clusters of blue Edo beads on the coat paid homage to Imah’s Nigerian heritage, as did a pin with both the U.S. and the Nigerian flags. “This is the look,” he says with a laugh, while modeling the garment inside his sleek condo in New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood.
Getting the look right is the main idea behind SpreeAI, which makes technology that lets shoppers virtually try on garments and accessories and view them from multiple angles. Imah says that the company has close to 40 partners, including American luxury brand Sergio Hudson and the British contemporary women’s wear label Kai Collective, and has raised nearly $100 million to date. In May, the company became a unicorn when it hit a valuation of $1.5 billion. The board includes his close friend and fashion royalty Naomi Campbell.
Industry reports say the global virtual try-on market is around $12.5 billion in 2025, with projections of its reaching $48 billion to $50 billion by 2030. While SpreeAI’s technology won’t be live for shoppers until late this year or early 2026, the try-on process is straightforward: A customer can take a picture of themself, upload one, or “select a preset model that looks like you,” Imah says. Then, Spree’s tech works to create an image of the shopper wearing a specific item, and produces results that are strikingly realistic. “We’re no different than OpenAI,” says Imah. “We’re just focused specifically on shopping.”
SpreeAI solves “very complex problems within the shopping industry,” Imah says. “We’re making sure shoppers can see how clothes look on themselves digitally in a lifelike, convincing way. We’re also addressing accurate sizing and fit visualization, so customers know how a garment will fit their body, which helps reduce product returns.”
Born in Texas to Nigerian parents, Imah recalls a seminal moment: his parents bringing home the family’s first computer when he was a child. “I was infatuated,” he says. So he did what any good young techie would do—he took it apart. “Technology in my household was kind of an afterthought,” he says. “I’m first-generation, and so their idea of success is being a doctor or a lawyer.”
Before starting SpreeAI, Imah racked up years of experience working on strategic partnerships at tech companies such as Snap, Meta, and Amazon’s Twitch. But he says he’d long been interested in “looking at a way to merge fashion and tech.”
A trip in 2022 helped him chart the path. “I went to Europe and met with all of these fashion executives, and they all started saying the same thing: ‘We need a product that will increase our sales, lower returns, and add personalization,’” he says. “That was the birth of SpreeAI.”
SpreeAI is not the only company in the virtual try-on space. Google unveiled a way for shoppers to do it earlier this year, and True Fit helps consumers figure out what size in popular brands will fit them best. But beyond the product’s realism, Imah says there’s a key factor that sets SpreeAI apart: It’s not a regular tech company trying to make inroads in the fashion industry—SpreeAI is natively a “fashion-tech company.”
John Imah’s coat from the Met Gala made in collaboration with designer Sergio Hudson. Photography by Nathan Bajar
“Part of it, too, is how I show up—when I say I’m meeting with a partner, I’m wearing that partner from head to toe,” he says. “They just gravitate toward me because they’re like, ‘OK, this guy obviously knows technology, but he also respects this space.’”
The fashion set concurs. Sergio Hudson, who has dressed the likes of Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris, says that Imah is “just a genuine guy.” A genuine guy who happens to help fashion brands solve a perennial problem.
“Just because our clothes sit next to Chanel in the store doesn’t mean our revenue compares to theirs,” says Hudson. “We can’t afford to sell a million dollars’ worth of clothes and then get $800,000 of returns. So this technology is really a gift.”