It accounts for the four major categories that influence Fit Volatility. Let’s run through them quickly and define what each one considers.

1 – Brand/Vendor Relationships. To what extent are these relationships adversarial and cost-driven? Recent Sourcing Journal reporting shows brands pay 30 percent less in real terms for a cotton T-shirt than they did 25 years ago, with the cost absorbed by garment suppliers in Bangladesh. Or are vendors true partners with some level of shared risk and interdependence? Cost-driven relationships cannot reduce Fit Volatility. Partnerships can.

2 – Internal Processes and Systems. Our definition of Fit Volatility rests on the failure of existing product development processes to evolve. Insights are routinely held hostage by marketing and reach the product development team late, if at all. Are deadlines in the product creation process being met? And a question underneath all of it: are fit blocks and size curves becoming unmoored from the bodies they were built to fit. Does the timeline for updating them match the rate of the customer’s body composition change?

3 – Customer Dynamics. Does the brand clearly understand its ideal buyer and evolve with them, or better yet, ahead of them? Does it see the adjacent opportunities surrounding that buyer? Consider an aging population that keeps growing while birth rates fall, retirement is being redefined and demographics of skilled labor workforces are changing.

4 – External Factors. Can the brand gauge the impact of external forces like weather events, GLP-1 weight loss and rebound rates, sudden wealth from IPOs, and immigration and emigration trends? Even better, can the brand anticipate these events and have a robust enough system in place to absorb the impact of said factors?