Just Starting - how do you start with the size breakout

curiousgeorge said:

I am not sure if I should focus on specific sizes more? Does it make sense to split out the sizes in this order?

Click to expand...

People follow a bell curve, so it's best if your sizing can reflect that. If you sell (for example) 3 XS, 10 S, 40 M, 35 L, it's going to be a lot harder to sell the extra XS (i.e. it's easier to sell 40 XS when you have other sizes in stock, than it is to sell 40 XS when XS is the only size you have).

Depending on your market I would consider stocking XLs.

All of that said... if you're happy doing 40 per size for your first run, you'll get an extremely good idea of how fast each size sells and therefore how to fine tune it for the next run. It could cost you some money that way, but experience is definitely the best way to know what size breakdown is going to work for you and your customers. If you expect to reprint the same design (i.e. 160 is a first run, but there will be followup runs) then that's even more true - if a size doesn't sell very fast you can just keep what you already have on hand and replace the sizes that do.

I know "it depends" isn't a very helpful answer, but it is fairly accurate

Sales by size will vary on the actual design - but the overall average for us comes in increments of the following breakdown:

2-S
3-M
4-L
3-XL
2-2XL

When we run a print - we base our INVENTORY LEVELS on this caluclation. For example - if you want to print 100 shirts to start, we would print the following:

13-S
22-M
29-L
22-XL
13-2XL

We then run calculations on 2nd & 3rd, 4th, 5th print runs based on standing inventory vs. minimum inventory levels each time so we're not too overstocked on one size. It makes a big difference on how much cash you are converting out of your inventory...and that you don't have hundereds/thousands of dollars sitting in dead inventory.

Good luck!

Mike