One chart, five factories
The size chart link on your product pages opens the same table everywhere: bust, waist, hip, UK 6 to 18. It was drawn up when you sold one range of jersey dresses from one factory. Since then you have added jeans made in Portugal, knitwear from a mill that sizes S, M and L, a tailoring line cut slimmer, and a kids' capsule.
Customer service gets messages like 'your chart says a 12 has a 30 inch waist but the jeans measure 31'. They are right. The chart describes a body the jersey dresses were designed around, not the jeans, and it says nothing at all about inside leg, rise or sleeve length.
Someone on the team has the real garment measurements. They are in the tech packs and the factory's size specs, in a folder, as PDFs and spreadsheets. They just never made it onto the website.
Why one chart survives for so long
Most Shopify themes offer a size chart as a single page or a single app setting. Adding a second chart means a second page, then someone has to remember which products link to which. With a few hundred styles and new drops every month, that manual linking falls over quickly, so everyone quietly goes back to one chart.
There is also a confusion between two kinds of chart. A body size chart tells the shopper which size to pick from their own measurements. A garment measurement chart tells them what the item actually measures flat. Brands often have only the first, when shoppers comparing with a favourite pair of jeans at home want the second.
The cost of the wrong chart
| Symptom | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| 'Your chart is wrong' emails | A generic body chart on a garment cut differently |
| Returns with 'too long' or 'too short' | No length, rise or inside leg shown |
| Marketplace listing rejections | Missing or inconsistent size data per style |
| Staff answering the same question | The right numbers exist but only in tech packs |
| Trust in all your sizing drops | One wrong chart makes shoppers doubt the others |
How we attach the right chart to every style
We build a small size data layer that sits beside your store rather than inside a theme setting.
- We collect your size specs from tech packs and factory sheets into one table per range: jeans, knit, jersey, tailoring, kids. Where you have garment measurements per style, those are kept too.
- Each product gets a size range reference, stored as a Shopify metafield or product tag, and the theme reads it to show the matching chart.
- New products inherit the chart automatically from their product type or collection, so nobody has to remember to link it when a drop goes live.
- The chart shows the columns that matter for that range: rise and inside leg for denim, chest and sleeve for knitwear, age and height for kids.
- A toggle lets shoppers switch between centimetres and inches, and between body sizes and garment measurements where you have both.
- A nightly check lists any live product that has no chart assigned, so gaps are caught before a shopper finds them.
Where you sell on marketplaces, the same size data can feed your listing exports, so the chart on your site and the attributes elsewhere agree.
When a range gets re-cut
Fashion brands change fits. The spring jeans might have a higher rise than last autumn's. We version the charts, so a style keeps pointing at the chart it was made to, and a re-cut range gets a new version rather than overwriting the old one. Older stock still on sale stays accurate.
Your production or product team can update a chart in a simple admin screen or a shared sheet. They do not need to open the theme code or ask a developer each time a measurement changes.
What changes for the team
Product pages show a chart that matches the garment. The 'your chart is wrong' emails lose their cause, because the chart now matches the garment. When the buyer adds a new knitwear style, it arrives with the knitwear chart already attached, and the nightly report tells someone if anything slipped through without one.
- One source of size data, owned by the product team
- Charts that match the range and the fit version
- No manual linking when products go live
- A list of products missing a chart, every morning
Signs you need per-range size charts
- Your whole store links to one size chart page.
- Garment measurements exist in tech packs but not on product pages.
- Customers email to say the chart does not match the item.
- Denim, knitwear and dresses are sized on different systems.
- New drops sometimes go live with no size chart at all.