Denim Jackets for Clothing Brands: size splits
By The Velocity Wear Team
Sizes mix freely inside the fifty-piece minimum, so the split is entirely your decision and entirely your risk. Weight it towards the middle of the range, keep the extremes shallow on a first drop, and publish measurements taken from your own sample. Denim does not stretch to rescue a near miss the way a jersey garment does, so a bad split shows up as returns.
How should a first denim drop split its fifty?
Put the bulk of the run in the two or three central sizes and take a shallow position on the ends. On a first drop you have no sell-through history to lean on, so the split is a hypothesis; the point is to make it a cautious one that still lets you cover the customers who do turn up. The garment side of the costing is on our wholesale denim jackets page.
Resist ordering an even number across every size. An even split looks fair on a spreadsheet and produces a pile of unsold extremes in practice, which is the most expensive way to be fair to a size curve that does not exist yet.
Why does denim sizing behave differently from jersey?
A hoodie that is slightly too big reads as intentional. A denim jacket that is slightly too big reads as borrowed. There is no stretch in the fabric to absorb the difference, rigid denim in particular has no give at all until it has been worn in, and the shoulder seam is a visible line that either sits right or does not.
Practically, that means your product page needs flat measurements rather than size letters. Chest, length and sleeve from your own sample, with a note on whether the fit is meant to be close or roomy, prevents more returns than any amount of styling does.
What do you do with the sizes that do not sell?
Plan for them before they happen. A handful of slow pieces can go to the people who photograph the drop, to press, or into a bundle later in the season. What they should not do is dictate the next order: a size that sat still on drop one should be shallower on drop two, not removed entirely on the strength of fifty units.
Hold the unit economics in view while you decide. Deeper tiers, from 50–99 up to 1,000 and beyond with up to 35% off the fifty-piece price, only pay if the extra pieces sell, and the pricing page shows where those boundaries sit.
How do you use sell-through to size the second run?
Record what sold by size, what was returned and what was exchanged, and treat exchanges as the loudest signal you have. An exchange from medium to large across several orders is telling you the fit runs small, which is a measurement problem on the listing rather than a manufacturing one.
Feed that curve into the reorder, where you also have the option of going deeper at a better tier. Brands working with repeat drops usually settle their curve by the third run; the mechanics of that restock are in denim jackets for clothing brands: reordering, and the wider service for brands is set out on our clothing brands page.
Photograph the fit as well as the garment. A jacket shot flat tells a customer nothing about whether it sits close or roomy, and a model shot with no height or size stated tells them almost as little. Say what the model is wearing and what they measure, put the flat measurements beside it, and the size questions in your inbox drop sharply. It costs nothing at the point of listing and it saves the return postage, the restocking work and the pieces that come back marked but unsellable, all of which land on the same fifty jackets you have already paid for.
