“It has been a while” is putting it mildly. The last time we released an update for Dress Measurement was on June 22, 2023, when we rolled out DM 1.4.8.

I’m not happy about the long break, but it was necessary.

So, what have we been up to?

In Q1 and Q2 of 2023, we began seriously designing Catch the Ghost Cloud. By August 2023, our focus shifted entirely to Catch the Ghost Cloud and consulting work. Since January 2024, we have been moving at warp speed to launch Catch the Ghost in May 2024, followed by a rapid rollout of new features.

Meanwhile, Dress Measurement quietly gained a cult following. We weren’t exactly sure who our audience was (Google Analytics has been tricky since GA4), but the app seemed to hit a plateau. We didn’t have the manpower to investigate and push forward.

In 2024, I decided it was time to take stock of Dress Measurement. Here’s what we found:

• Dress Measurement has over 153,000 downloads since launch.
• We have 3,000 monthly active users in 120 countries.
• The app is still installed on about 125,000 phones and maintains a 4.5 rating on the App Store.

Over the years, we slowly added features requested by users, culminating in the Custom Measurements feature in 1.4 back in 2021. All these years, we’ve given away the core app for free, ad-supported. As long as you didn’t need custom measurements, photos, and notes, you could use the app for free.

My goal for the end of 2024 was to:

1. Offer a yearly paid tier with a significant discount (requested by many paid users).
2. Analyze how many profiles our users created—did they have just a few profiles, or hundreds?
3. Read all the app reviews and investigate complaints about iCloud syncing and backup bugs.
4. Monetize the app by limiting the free tier to users with light, personal use.
5. Fix all iCloud syncing and backup bugs.
6. Dedicate more time to personally provide tech support and get to know our customers. This was something we hadn’t done well before. Over the past few months, I’ve had back-and-forth conversations with several power users and even conducted over a dozen video calls to diagnose their issues.

Here’s what we learned:

• Google Analytics 4 didn’t give us the exact figures we needed, so we used a random sampling method and discovered that most of our users are SMBs.
• Many of our users have hundreds of profiles, some as high 900 profiles that they manage for their clients.
• Despite severe issues with iCloud syncing and backups, our app maintained a 4.5 rating on the App Store.
• We had achieved Product-Market Fit for a niche market. Even with broken syncing, users were forgiving and continued running data locally on their iPhones.
• 100% of our tech support requests in the past year came from SMBs in the clothing and fashion industry.
• Many of our clients exclusively user our app to run their custom clothing business. This was something we wanted to happen, but it came as a bit of a surprise. We have to have many more conversations with our users to understand their needs and how DM can grow to fit their business needs!

Without any advertising, our app has been growing organically. However, our conversion rate and cancelations have been about equal due to recurring bugs in the app.

Since November 2024, we’ve been hard at work testing and debugging, leading to numerous fixes in 1.4.10, which will be our final release before monetizing Dress Measurement. We already introduced our Tailor Shop Annual tier with DM 1.4.9 in November 2024.

What’s next?

We will be releasing DM 1.5 before the end of January. In this release, the free tier will be limited to 7 profiles. Users needing unlimited profiles will need to subscribe to a paid tier.

We notified our users about this change on November 21, 2024, initially planning to release 1.5 in December. However, we delayed the release to ensure a smooth transition and protect customer data. Since we don’t have access to user data (it’s entirely private), it’s been challenging to fix bugs without direct data access.

As a thank you to our early adopters, we’re offering 100 free promo codes for a 1-year subscription to Tailor Shop, the paid tier of Dress Measurement. Several users have already taken us up on this offer.

We’re excited about the future and grateful for your continued support. Thank you for trusting Dress Measurement to help you manage your work in the clothing and fashion industry!