Size Charts and Fit: Getting Sizing Right for Your Brand
By The Velocity Wear Team
Publish actual garment measurements — chest width, body length, sleeve — rather than only S/M/L labels. Sizing is not standardised across manufacturers, so a customer who knows their measurements can order correctly from a chart but cannot guess correctly from a letter.
Why Letters Are Not Enough
There is no industry-wide definition of a medium. One brand's medium is another's small, and a customer who wears medium in three different labels genuinely does not know what they wear in yours. If your product page offers only S, M and L, you are asking every customer to guess, and a meaningful proportion of them will guess wrong. Each wrong guess is a return, which costs you postage both ways and often the sale.
What a Good Size Chart Includes
The measurements that actually determine fit.
- Chest width, measured flat across the garment one inch below the armhole — the single most useful number for a top.
- Body length from the highest point of the shoulder to the hem, which determines whether it sits at the hip or below it.
- Sleeve length, particularly important on hoodies and long-sleeved garments.
- Shoulder width for structured garments, where fit is less forgiving than on a boxy tee.
- State whether measurements are of the garment laid flat or of the body they are intended to fit — this is a common and confusing ambiguity.
Describe the Intended Fit
Measurements alone do not tell someone how a garment is meant to look. A 56cm chest width could be a fitted large or an oversized small depending on intent. Say explicitly whether a garment is a regular, relaxed, boxy or oversized fit, and whether you recommend sizing up or down. A single sentence — this is a relaxed fit, size down for a closer look — prevents a substantial number of returns.
“"Every return caused by sizing was preventable with information you already had."”
Choosing Your Size Spread
How many of each size to order is a separate problem from what your chart says. New brands consistently misjudge it, typically over-ordering the extremes and under-ordering the middle. The reliable way to find out is empirical: order across the full range on a first run at the 20-piece minimum, then let actual sales tell you the shape of your customer base before scaling. Guessing this on a large order is how brands end up with unsellable stock in the sizes nobody wanted.
Consistency Across a Range
If you sell more than one garment, sizing needs to be consistent between them, or a customer who buys a medium tee and a medium hoodie will find they fit quite differently. Where possible, choose garments from coordinated ranges. Where you cannot, publish separate size charts per product rather than one generic chart — an inaccurate shared chart is worse than two accurate specific ones.
Practical Steps
Measure your actual garments when a first run arrives rather than relying only on supplied specifications, and publish what you measured. Orders start at 20 pieces with mixed sizes allowed, so a full-range test run is straightforward, and bulk discounts up to around 40% apply when you scale the sizes that proved themselves. Preview designs in the free Design Studio and model quantities in the free instant price calculator.