Running a Uniform Fitting Day: A Practical Guide
By The Velocity Wear Team
A fitting day is a scheduled session where staff try on real sample garments in every size before anyone commits to an order. It exists to kill the biggest single cause of uniform returns and dead stock, which is people guessing their size from what they wear on the high street rather than from the garment actually in front of them. Run it once, record the results properly, and you can reorder from that record for years.
Why Guessing Fails So Reliably
A large in one manufacturer's polo is not a large in another's, and workwear cuts are generally more generous than fashion cuts. Ask fifty people for their size by email and you will get fifty answers based on a shirt they bought somewhere else. Then there is the layering problem: a softshell that fits beautifully over a t-shirt in July is tight over a fleece in January, and nobody thinks about that while replying to an email in summer.
There is also a quieter issue. People order aspirationally. Given a form and no garment, a proportion of any workforce will order a size down, wear it once, and quietly stop wearing it. That garment is not returned, it is not reissued, and it does not show up anywhere in your figures. It just becomes uniform nobody is wearing.
Getting a Sample Set in the Room
You need one of each size in each garment on the list, in the actual blank you intend to order, not a lookalike. Order the set undecorated. Blank samples are quicker to get hold of because nothing has to be printed or stitched, and an unbranded sample can be handled by dozens of people without anyone getting precious about it. Decoration decisions are separate and can run in parallel.
Order the set well ahead. Since Velocity Wear supplies online rather than from a shop, the sample set is a delivery like any other, and you want it sitting in the room a week before the fitting day rather than arriving that morning.
Set the Room Up So People Actually Try Things On
The practical difference between a good fitting day and a queue people avoid comes down to a few things. A full-length mirror. A private space, or at minimum a corner where someone can pull a polo on over their own top without an audience. Sizes hung in order with the size clearly visible on the hanger, so people can grab one either side of what they think they need without asking. And someone running it who will say, out loud, that a garment looks tight, because most people will not volunteer that themselves.
Ask people to come dressed as they are at work. Someone who wears a base layer under their polo needs to try the polo over the base layer, and someone whose fleece goes over a hoodie needs to size the fleece accordingly.
Record More Than the Size
The output of the day is not a pile of tried-on garments, it is a document. Capture it in a single sheet you keep centrally, not on individual scraps.
- Name and, if you have them, staff number and site.
- Garment, by supplier code rather than by description.
- The size chosen, and the sizes tried and rejected.
- A short fit note in plain words: sleeves long, prefers roomy, went up for layering.
- The date, because bodies and preferences change and a five-year-old record needs a caveat on it.
The fit note is the part people skip and the part that pays off. Sizes become meaningless when a blank is discontinued and you have to move the whole workforce onto a different manufacturer. A note saying somebody sized up for layering tells you what to do next. A bare letter L does not.
“"A size chart gives you a measurement. A fitting day tells you what a person will actually put on in February, and those two answers are rarely the same."”
Timing It Against the Production Calendar
The fitting day has to finish, and the sizes have to be collated, before artwork approval. Production starts at approval, not at the point you place the order, so anything unresolved at that moment holds the whole run. Screen printing and embroidery typically take around 10-15 working days from approval, sublimation and more complex jobs nearer 15-20, with UK tracked delivery usually 2-5 working days after dispatch. Work back from your go-live date and put the fitting day comfortably in front of that, not tight against it.
The Awkward Cases, Handled Properly
Some people will not want to try clothes on in front of colleagues, and pushing them is both unkind and counterproductive, because they will simply guess and you are back where you started. Offer a private slot, keep the sample set available for a week afterwards, and let people take a garment away to try. For anyone between sizes, the general rule in workwear is to go up, because a garment that is slightly generous gets worn and one that is slightly tight does not.
When It Is Not Worth the Effort
Be honest about the threshold. For a team of eight ordering one style of t-shirt, a decent size chart with actual chest measurements will get you most of the way and a fitting day is overkill. It earns its place when the order is large, when the range includes fitted or structured garments, when outerwear is involved, or when you are locking in a specification you intend to reorder against for years. That last case is the strongest, because the sizing work is done once and reused every time.