Planning a production run: how many of each size

What you take from this lesson: Come out of a production run with as few unsold garments as possible.

The sales curve isn't flat

Sizes don't sell in equal parts. The middle sizes sell considerably more than the extremes, and that holds true in almost any market.

Cutting the same quantity of every size guarantees two problems at once: running out of the middle sizes halfway through the season and being left with the extremes in the warehouse.

A reasonable starting distribution for a five-size range, when you don't have your own data yet, is to concentrate around 60% of the units in the two central sizes and spread the rest across the extremes.

Your own data is worth more than any rule

That distribution is a starting point, not a truth. After the first production run you have something much better: real data on which size sold out first and which one was left over.

That's why it pays to write down, from the very first sale, which size was sold. It is the piece of data that saves the most money on the second production run, and it costs nothing to get.

Few styles, full size range

When you are torn between producing four styles in the whole size range or ten styles in two sizes each, the answer is almost always the first one.

Customers don't buy variety: they buy their size. A style they like that isn't available in their size is a lost sale, while one fewer style on the rack almost never is.

Also, fewer styles means fewer spreads, fewer different fabric purchases, and fewer different trims and notions: the whole production gets simpler.

How much to produce in total

The honest answer for a first production run is: the minimum that lets you test the style without the unit cost shooting up.

Producing too much is the fastest way to tie up capital in something you don't yet know will sell. Producing too little makes each unit more expensive, because the setup time for spreading and for the machine is divided among only a few garments.

The middle ground is usually a small but complete run: the full size range of one style, with the distribution concentrated in the middle sizes.

Common mistakes

• Cutting the same quantity of every size.
• Producing many styles with incomplete size ranges.
• Not recording which size sold, and repeating the same distribution blindly in the next production run.

In short

The middle sizes sell more, and the cutting distribution has to reflect that. A few styles with the full size range sell more than many styles with incomplete ones.