Streamlining Sampling & Sizing: Sustainability Through the Lens of Fit
By Laura Zwanziger
“The factory followed none of my directions…How can I get my factory to listen?” -Designer
“I wish [the factory] had just asked” -Designer
“The designer does not know what they want” -Factory
“I received a 40-page tech pack for a t-shirt” -Factory
Sound familiar? The above are the most common industry insider responses we heard when discussing the first step of when fit and sizing goes wrong: during sampling. Before we get into it, I’m going to outline a few more real-life, specific scenarios:
Example 1:
A designer makes a tech pack and sends it to a factory. The factory uses an on-hand similar pattern with adjustments, makes, and sends a sample. The designer feels this is completely different from their inspiration and corrects the sample during a fitting. The factory corrects the sample. The original pattern (uncorrected) is then sent to production.
Issues: Lack of documentation, communication
Example 2:
A young brand is just starting up and working with four different factories. The new brand has no sales data and does not yet know who their customer is. They decide to use “standard” sizing, and they ask each of their factories to size this way. Each factory uses grade rules they have on hand…none of which are the same. The young brand now has four differently sized size 8’s with different factories. This results in an inability for customers to reliably shop online with a single size chart-the size chart does not reflect the actual clothing, or the people who will be wearing it! The company experiences high return rates and high rates of unsold inventory, that the brand has made and never sold, leading to unnecessary waste and unsustainable practices.
Issues: Lack of customer knowledge, no sizing/grading know-how, no quality control, over and mis-production.
Example 3:
A factory receives a multi-sheet Excel tech pack from a designer missing critical measurements. Further, the chest measurement does not reflect measurements of any model the factory has ever seen. Where did they take this measurement from? In the past, when asking for this type of information, the factory was met with hostility by designers and lost work, so they try to make educated guesses. They adjust the chest to a similar pattern to fit an in- house mannequin. They opened the tech pack on smartphones, and tried to print out instructions, although formatting means the Excel is not readable except on a screen, which cannot be brought on the factory floor. After reformatting, several pages were printed off and brought to the floor, where a few pages were lost…and then ignored.
Issues: Lack of ability to ask a question, formatting and length of tech pack is unusable, no defined point of measurement diagram.
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Reflecting on the above examples, none of these scenarios are rocket-science level issues (wrinkle science, not rocket science, as my pattern making professor used to say in college), but they snowball from sampling into production, resulting in overstock, returns, and unnecessary waste and frustration.
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Hi All, my name is Laura Zwanziger. I am the founder of Fit for Everybody, a product development platform for designers and factories to streamline sampling and sizing through low level intervention points. How low level? Really low level. Think:
One-page quick and dirty tech packs
Easy to use product documentation through development
Category-based point of measurement diagrams
Defined grading specific to your customer
Quality control templates
Chat with translation
…All neatly packed into a minimalist platform for a single source of truth for designers, from emerging designers to established industry veterans. We prioritize easy integration and low level-high impact intervention points to improve efficiency in sampling and accuracy and consistency in sizing.
Interested in learning more? Please reach out to laura@fitforeverybody.com.
Laura Zwanziger
Laura is a designer and entrepreneur who has focused on fit, sizing, and sampling throughout her career. She began her career factory-side, before being hired into the design department at Oscar de la Renta as a product developer for knitwear. She pivoted to go to business school at MIT, where she began work on Fit for Everybody, focusing on improving supply chain efficiency and sustainability through the lens of fit and sizing.
