John Imah Wants You To See Yourself In The Dress Before You Buy It

You know the moment. The dress looks incredible on the model. You order it in three sizes because you cannot tell which will fit. Two go back. One sits in the closet because "incredible on the model" turned out to mean "weird on you." The whole cycle has been the unspoken cost of online shopping for two decades, and many shoppers have simply accepted it.

John Imah does not want you to accept it anymore.

The CEO and co-founder of SPREEAI - the AI fashion-tech company now valued at $1.5 billion - has spent the last three years building what's effectively the answer to a question every online shopper has muttered at her phone screen: will this actually fit me?

His bet is yes.

So What Is SPREEAI?

A "Try On" button designed to help shoppers visualize clothing before purchasing.

You're on a brand's site. You click the button. You upload a photo or pick a model that resembles you. You enter your height and weight. And in seconds, you see a photorealistic image of yourself — your face, your body — wearing the dress, in multiple poses.

Not a cartoon avatar. Not a vague approximation. The garment, on you.

SPREEAI doesn't run as its own destination - you don't go to SPREEAI to shop. The technology sits invisibly inside the brands you already shop at, white-labeled into their existing site or app. You'll likely never see the company's name. You'll just see a button intended to help shoppers make more informed purchasing decisions.

According to company-reported metrics shared at industry events, the platform has demonstrated strong engagement and sizing prediction performance among participating users.

Why Now

Online apparel returns hover somewhere between 20 and 40 percent industry-wide. That number is staggering: every third dress shipped is going back. Brands have known this is a problem for years. The fixes have all been visual: sharper images, swipeable galleries, video on the product page, the same one-model-eight-poses formula on repeat.

None of it has fixed the underlying issue, which is that the person in the photo is not the person at the checkout.

"You know that feeling when online shopping feels like a gamble?" Imah says. "Will this actually fit me? Will it even look good on me? We're solving that issue head-on. Our product lets you upload a photo and literally become the model, seeing yourself in any outfit with lifelike precision."

The technical problem is harder than it sounds. AI is not great at fashion, historically. AI can identify a sweater. The harder problem is figuring out whether it's the sweater for you — the way fabric drapes, the way a cut moves, the way a piece reads on one body type versus another. It's the kind of nuance that's killed a lot of try-on startups before SPREEAI.

The category is also crowded. Several large platforms have been promising photoreal try-on for years. SPREEAI's pitch is that it was built from the fashion side in.

"That's the problem we saw: too many tools, too little clarity," he said at a panel last year. "That's why we built SPREEAI, a fashion-first, not tech-only, solution designed to help brands personalize and visualize while staying authentic to their own aesthetics."

A Founder Who Actually Shows Up To The Parties

Imah is a fashion-tech CEO who has become one of the more visible leaders in the fashion-tech sector. There's a reason.

In 2025, he walked the red carpet in a custom look for the Superfine: Tailoring Black Style theme. He returned in 2026 for Costume Art, against a Fashion Is Art dress code that fit his pitch perfectly. He has been named in the 2025 AI Power Index and put on the Future 50 list as a Visionary Founder.

The company around him reads similarly. The SPREEAI board includes investors Bob Davidson and Larry Ruvo. The company has continued to expand its network of investors, advisors, and industry relationships while developing AI-powered tools for online apparel shopping.

It's not the org chart of a typical Silicon Valley startup. It’s the chart of a company that has built relationships across both the fashion and technology sectors as it expands its presence in online retail.

What This Means For You

You're going to start seeing this button on more sites. Probably soon.

The version of online shopping you've been living with - order three sizes, return two, hope the one fits - has been the default for so long that most people forgot it was a problem someone could solve. The bet SPREEAI is making is that the next version of online shopping is one where you know what you're buying. And the brand on the other end knows what you want, because they have data on what customers buy when they can see themselves in the product.

"Style is intuition and technology is discipline," Imah says. "When both are done right, you don't just shop - you show up with confidence."

There's something almost mundane about the goal when it's said plainly. Less wasteful shipping. Fewer regretful purchases. A closet full of things you wear. But that's the version of AI some consumers may find appealing - the one that aims to address a challenge many shoppers may face.

Not artificial intelligence trying to be fashion. Fashion finally getting AI that understands it

BDG Media newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.