In her piece, “The Outside View: Size Isn’t Just a Plus-size Issue,” size/fit expert Jessica Couch, covers the industry’s resistance to size/fit inclusivity and diversity as a primary reason for customer dissatisfaction as well as a factor in the increase of product returns to apparel retailers.
According to Couch:
[The] main underlying issue is in fit data collection and analyzation. Luckily, many tools exist to help brands collect the right data and create the right solutions. Brands need to be able to identify the obvious and non-obvious size- and fit-related issues affecting their business. For some brands, returns are the main issue, for others high traffic and low conversions are the issue and for many others it is cart abandonment…
The sizing issue isn’t just a plus-size issue. It is an operations issue that is costly, wasteful and marginalizes groups of people from participating in the shopping experience. For brands and retailers, this contributes to costly returns, restocking fees and logistical costs, not to mention the missed sales from hesitations and cart abandonment.
In the piece, Couch highlights Newmine as a notable technology solution provider that is changing the way retailers approach Size/Fit, through “optimizing retail commerce and returns reduction through deep retail strategy, operations, and IT systems integration.”