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THE IMPERFECT FIT

APPAREL CHAINS ARE WOOING SHOPPERS WITH FITTING SERVICES, BUT WITH MIXED RESULTS

By Maura K. Ammenheuser

Women can tell you — perhaps vehemently — which clothing brands and styles fit, and which do not. Especially when they do not.

“Customers are very frustrated finding the right size for them,” said Seung-Eun (Joy) Lee, an associate professor of apparel merchandising and design at Central Michigan University. American women are bigger today than they were 50 years ago, when many of the current sizing patterns were first created en masse, even though everyone's shape is unique, she says.

“Most brands have a fit model,” said Marybeth Luber, CEO of Archetype, an Emeryville, Calif., software company that generates custom clothing patterns. Most retailers scale patterns up and down from the fit model, though they sometimes change the model, Luber says.

No wonder it is so tough to find a good fit. But some chains are trying to offer custom-fit services over the Internet. A few national retailers are actually doing so, while others have made an admirable effort. In any case, this kind of “mass customization” underscores the difficulties of providing a perfect fit to everyone.

The Internet is a better customer-measurement vehicle than physical stores, says Lee, because in-store service requires too much personnel, time and space. Among those taking on the online fitting challenge are JCPenney, Lands' End and QVC.

In 2004 Penney launched a service to customize jeans, chinos and other garments. A customer enters measurements on the Penney Web site and then makes choices of color, rise and the like. Jeans cost $44 to $54 and take four weeks to ship. Penney spokeswoman Kate Parkhouse says that since 2006, in-store point-of-sale systems have been linked to jcp.com and can accommodate custom orders. Penney allows returns of these custom items and saves the measurements for future orders.

But Penney is focusing these online custom efforts more on menswear than on women's clothing, says Parkhouse, because women want to touch and feel the items before buying — a neat trick indeed in cyberspace.

Dodgeville, Wis.–based Lands' End offers custom jeans and chinos for about $80. For men it also offers custom pants and dress shirts. After entering measurements on the site, a shopper chooses from among the several style features. In 2005 parent company Sears added Lands' End shops to 200 Sears stores. Customers can place orders over the Internet or at an in-store kiosk, and shipping is free, says Michele Casper, a spokeswoman for Lands' End. Lands' End launched its custom clothing service in 2001.

“You truly get to be the designer,” Casper said. “You choose the cut, the fit — it's a pattern made specifically for you.” Land's End allows returns, and shoppers can tweak their measurements online and then reorder.

West Chester, Pa.–based cable TV and Internet retailer QVC offers custom-fit women's denim and twill jeans online for about $70. Spokeswoman Jaime Hollerbach declined to comment about any other aspect of the operation, but the order process is like that of the aforementioned chains.

Two other national retailers, meanwhile, have discontinued their custom programs. In 2004 Target introduced Target to a T, which let shoppers customize certain private-label items online. “We understood that our guests come in all shapes and sizes,” Target spokeswoman Jeannine Befidi wrote by e-mail. “We wanted to provide all of our guests with the option of getting great-fitting clothing.”

At first, sales exceeded expectations, Befidi wrote, though she disclosed no specifics. Target discontinued the program because it “required additional work and development that did not support the business case to expand the program.” In addition, customers had trouble taking their own measurements, which resulted in a large number of returns. Further, “there was a lack of technology to create custom patterns based on guests' expectations of a custom fit.”

Levi Strauss set up “body-scanning” kiosks in 14 of its stores in 12 markets in 2005. Shoppers could step into the circular machine fully clothed and emerge with a set of measurements in mere seconds. The chain did not actually custom-make any items, but it used the data to match the shopper with the best-fitting jeans in stock.

Levi Strauss had said that it planned to install these body-scanning machines in most of its stores. That never happened, and the company declined to comment to SCT.

These retailers certainly found out that trying to provide that great fit is not necessarily fitting. Customizing accessories such as handbags is one thing, but “in clothing it does not work,” said Patricia Pao, who heads a retail consulting firm in New York City called Pao Principle. If mass customization “was really so great, this would be your whole [business] model.”

Rob Weber is president of Conshohocken, Pa.–based Intellifit Corp., which created the body-scanning machine Levi Strauss had been using. “The greatest hindrance we've seen … is being able to efficiently and quickly and accurately take people's measurements,” Weber said.

Pao says clothing makers have yet to find a way to fill the need that makes sense economically. Neither have retailers marketed their custom options heavily. They are still “testing it out to see if it really works for their targeted market,” said Lee.

Retailers have higher priorities, some say, so custom clothing remains a niche effort. Against the usual model of selling standard-issue inventory ordered months in advance, this “represents a different way of thinking” and an inconvenience, said Weber.

Lands' End had in place the vendor infrastructure needed, says Casper, because it already offered such custom touches as monogramming. “One of the challenges is you have to have the vendor relationships to be able to cut and sew individual garments,” Casper said.

Of course, fit is a highly personal call, so though the retailer may consider the fit to be fine, the customer may not agree, Luber says.

Any retailer who can leap these hurdles will reap a rich benefit: loyalty from customers who find great-fitting garments only in that one place.

Statistics on the return rates for women's clothing, whether in-store or online, are hard to get, but the consensus is that online sales result in more returns, for obvious reasons. Weber, in any case, says the vast majority of returns are for poor fit. No source was willing to divulge the losses that these returns incur, nor would anyone reveal the costs of custom programs, the revenues they generate or even whether they are profitable.

Lands' End considers itself successful because its men's dress shirts are popular. “It is a successful program,” Casper said. “Our customers love it.”

Hard-to-fit women do have options besides custom-made garments from national retailers. A few independent merchants offer these services, such as Fit n Hip Wear, of El Cajon, Calif. And Web sites like Zafu.com or MyShape.com use shopper measurements to recommend the brands and sizes likely to fit and to flatter. Zafu deals in jeans, while MyShape offers a full wardrobe. Otherwise, they will have to be content with a limited number of retailers, or buy off the rack as best they can and hire a seamstress to do alterations.

For now, says Lee, mass customization remains a small niche. “It's not for everybody.”