business

Online clothing retailers hunt for better fit to cut costly returns

11 Comments
By Emma Thomasson and Sonya Dowsett

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11 Comments
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It's a huge problem for me, a tall guy living in Lilliputia. I find myself shopping online less and less. The shipping is murder anyway and who's offering free returns from Asia? I can order 3 tall large shirts or 3 pairs of 32" waist pants, which I've been wearing for nearly 30 years, and get wildly different products in return, sometimes from the same store. And don't get me started on shoes.

It's just easier to shop like mad on visits home.

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Once you find a pair of pant you like and that fit properly, get about 10 of them and you are set for a long time.

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It's just easier to shop like mad on visits home.

You can say that again. I like the tall shirts LL Bean offers but llbean.japan is wat too expensive coparitvly.

"If the fit isn't right, customers will walk."

What, no mention of the quality???

You know how difficult it is to find shirts and sweat pants/shirts in 100% cotton? Furthermore, the material just gets thinner and thinner. What we do is hit the local garage sales and buy up some sweet high quality used clothes. All the sweatshirts I wear now were hand-me-downs. Only item I buy new is Levi’s ($50. Average) and dress stuff from LL Bean US.

Never heard of these companies but would like to know if they’re similar to Uniqlo thin cheap stuff or higher quality stuff.

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Fizzbit, is it only me or didn't LL Bean Japan used to stock a lot of US sizes? At least the Kobe store. Now it's exclusively J-Fit. Eddie Bauer I think still sells US sizes but I don't like their stuff that much, even more so what's on offer here, and it's always L or XL. I'm 6'3" 185 so I either wind up with a billowing shirt or sleeves that are too short. I sometimes look at khakis in the Gap and they all top off at 32" inseams, not the 34 I need.

Which is just the total opposite of my wife's experience when we lived stateside. She had to search for XS sizes or venture into junior zones.

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Jcapan, Yes you’re correct. I would often run a price comparison between the US and Japan. Even had LLB delivered here from the US store before Japan got started, then they nixed delivery to Japan.

I have never seen an Eddie B or gap store here but I don’t live in the 3 large cities, and don’t like clothes shopping much anyway.

Which is just the total opposite of my wife's experience when we lived stateside. She had to search for XS sizes or venture into junior zones.

LOL Same here too, vacations only though. Junior and petite only.

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Reckless, I have a few EB oxfords in my closet. They're usually pretty well made but even at a US-EB earlier this year, I tried on two different shirts (same size/type) and the one had sleeves 2" shorter than the other. Sometimes I'm desperate and I hit the Kobe store or order online, but I far prefer visiting a store stocking the right sizes and trying things on to make sure they fit as they should. Not to mention seeing how the material looks or feels. I once ordered a pair of shoes from Keen that looked brown online and they turned up looking olive green!? J-Crew is usually pretty consistent, just their prices are ridiculous, especially when you factor in shipping. I got a ton of their stuff from an outlet mall last summer that would have cost me triple had I bought it online.

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Lots of foreign brands have separate operations for Japan who simply license the name. They are not the same clothes with the same sizes. To confuse matters, they may have both overseas and Japanese licensee clothes in the same store.

A couple of Japanese retailers do cheap returns for online sales. The trainer shop ABC Mart does for a 500 yen fee, and it looks like Amazon JP does too. We go everywhere by car, and there aren't many shops we can reach for 500 yen worth of gas.

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boo hoo big retail.... how about donating the returned clothing to the homeless?

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