The True Cost of Returns: Why Fit Matters in Men's Apparel

Here's a number that should make any clothing brand wince: $849.9 billion. That's how much merchandise Americans are expected to send back in 2025, per the National Retail Federation and Happy Returns, or 15.8% of everything sold. Shop online and it climbs. Nearly a fifth of e-commerce sales (19.3%) are headed back. Clothing leads the pile, too. Coresight Research pegs the average U.S. online apparel return rate at 24.4%, close to one order in four.

We pulled the latest return rate statistics from the NRF, Happy Returns, Coresight Research, Statista, Wayflyer, Baymard Institute and Zalando's research team, then added fit ratings from INTO THE AM's own Basic Tee reviews. So why does so much of it come back? And who eats the cost? Mostly, it comes down to fit.

Key Takeaways

• $849.9 billion in U.S. retail returns projected for 2025. About 15.8% of all sales, and 19.3% of online ones.
• Clothing tops the list online. A quarter of U.S. online shoppers (25%) sent clothes back in the last year.
• Fit is the big one: 53% of apparel brands name size and fit as a top reason things come back, and 26% of apparel and footwear orders include a "bracketed" size bought to be returned.
• Bad returns cost loyalty. 71% of shoppers say a poor experience makes them less likely to buy there again.

Retail Returns in 2025: An $849.9 Billion Problem

Returns are no longer a rounding error. They're a second supply chain running backwards. The latest Retail Returns Landscape from the NRF and Happy Returns has $849.9 billion in goods coming back this year. That's a little under the $890 billion the NRF projected for 2024. Still more than 15 cents on every retail dollar, though. Online orders come back even more often, at 19.3%. The holidays add their own spike, with retailers expecting 17% of holiday sales to be returned. Some of it isn't honest, either. The same report found that 9% of all returns are fraudulent.

Key Insights

• The online rate sits 3.5 points above the all-channel rate. Without a fitting room, the shopper's bedroom becomes one, and the box goes back when the shirt doesn't work.
• A slightly lower 2025 total doesn't mean the problem is shrinking. It still works out to more than $1 in every $7 of sales heading back through a warehouse.

Clothing Is the Most-Returned Category Online: 24.4% of Apparel Orders Come Back

No category gets sent back like clothes do. Coresight Research estimates that 24.4% of online apparel orders in the U.S. are returned, worth about $38 billion a year. Shoppers say the same thing from the other side of the counter: in Statista's Consumer Insights survey, 25% of U.S. online shoppers had returned clothing in the past 12 months, far ahead of shoes (17%) and accessories (12%). Men return less than women. Wayflyer looked at 28 million orders from more than 400 online apparel retailers and found that 1 in 8 items sold by men-focused stores comes back, against 1 in 5 at women-focused stores. Less, though, is not none.

Key Insights

• Price doesn't explain the gender gap. In Wayflyer's data, men's items under $25 return at 4.5% (women's: 7%), and men's items between $25 and $50 at 10% (women's: 18%). The gap holds in every price band.
• For a men's brand, a 12% return rate still means one shirt in eight makes the round trip. Each of those is postage, handling and a customer who didn't get what he wanted.

Size and Fit Drive Most Clothing Returns

Ask apparel brands why things come back and one answer dominates. In Coresight's survey of brands and retailers, size and fit was the top return reason, named by 53% of respondents. Color came next at 16%, then damage at 10%. Shoppers have adapted to the guesswork by buying two sizes and returning one, a habit called bracketing. The NRF and Happy Returns found that 26% of apparel and footwear purchases in the past year included a bracketed item, and 51% of Gen Z shoppers say they bracket. Part of the blame sits with the size labels themselves. When Esquire measured men's pants labelled waist 36 back in 2010, the real waistbands ran anywhere from 37 to 41 inches.

Key Insights

• Bracketing is a fit problem wearing a disguise. Nobody orders a medium and a large because they love returns. They do it because they can't tell which one will fit.
• The information gap is on the retailer's side. When Baymard finds that 83% of desktop apparel sites don't give shoppers enough sizing detail, the second box in the cart starts to make sense.

What a Return Really Costs: 66% of the Product Price to Process

A return isn't a refund and a shrug. Optoro, a returns-technology company cited by Coresight Research, found that processing a return typically costs a company 66% of the product's price. Then there's resale. Less than half of it sells again at full price. In an SML survey of U.S. and U.K. apparel retailers (reported by Retail Brew), that figure was 47%. Another 42% went out at a discount, and 12% never sold again. Shoppers notice the squeeze. Most merchants (72%) now charge for at least one way of sending something back, up from 66% a year earlier, so it's no surprise that 81% of shoppers check the return policy before they buy.

Key Insights

• "Free returns" are never free. Somebody pays the 66%, either the brand or the shopper through a fee.
• The loyalty hit is the part brands underrate. Seven in ten shoppers (71%) say one bad return puts them off the store. Cheapest return? The one that never happens.

Returns and the Planet: 9.6 Billion Pounds a Year to Landfill

Every return rides a truck twice. Optoro's estimate, as Retail Brew reported it in 2022: returned inventory creates 9.6 billion pounds of landfill waste a year, and the whole process puts out more than 27 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. Not every shopper contributes equally. A Vrije Universiteit Brussel study of about 10,000 European shoppers found that frequent returners emit almost 20 kilograms of CO2 a year through their returns, and account for close to 60% of return emissions.

Key Insights

• Get the fit right the first time and the shirt never takes that second truck ride. No repackaging. No liquidation pallet. No landfill.
• Fewer, better-fitting basics also bring down the environmental cost per wear. Over a whole wardrobe, that's the number that adds up.

How to Cut Clothing Returns: Fit Info Shoppers Can Trust

Size advice helps. Some. When Zalando's research team tested size advice flags on product pages, size-related returns dropped by 3.8% (relative) for shoes, and by 4.3% and 6.6% for clothing flagged as running small or large. Tools alone aren't magic, though. A study of nearly half a million items at a Swedish fashion retailer found that shoppers who used a size finder were 0.65% more likely to return an item, not less. What seems to matter is a fit that stays the same from one order to the next, described honestly by the people who've worn it.

INTO THE AM Basic Tee: What 3,135 Fit Ratings Say

Our own reviews show what a consistent cut looks like in practice. The Basic Tee is built to fit through the arms and chest and stay loose at the midsection, in sizes S to 4XL, with a Tall version that adds 2 inches of body length and 1 inch of sleeve. Here's how shoppers on intotheam.com rated the fit, as of November 2, 2026.

Key Insights

• When the misses split evenly between "small" and "large", the cut isn't drifting one way. That reads more like personal taste than a sizing error.
• A practical fix on your end: grab a tee you already love, lay it flat, and measure armpit to armpit, then collar to hem. Check those numbers against the size chart and ignore the letter on the tag. Length always the problem? Go Tall.

Further Reading

• Best Fitting T-Shirts for Men: 2026 Ranking
• What Makes a Perfect Men's T-Shirt? A Data-Driven Analysis
• The State of Men's E-Commerce: 2026 Report
• Shop Men's Basic Tees

About INTO THE AM: INTO THE AM has sold men's apparel online since 2012, and the Basic Tee is still where most guys start: a soft cotton-blend tee cut to fit through the arms and chest without clinging at the middle, in sizes S to 4XL plus Tall. More than five million have sold, with 100,000+ reviews across intotheam.com and Amazon. Find your size at intotheam.com.

Sources

• National Retail Federation and Happy Returns: 2025 Retail Returns Landscape (press release)
• National Retail Federation and Happy Returns: 2025 Retail Returns Landscape (report)
• National Retail Federation: 2024 Consumer Returns in the Retail Industry
• Retail Dive: Retail returns growth, 2024
• Coresight Research: The True Cost of Apparel Returns
• Statista: Most Returned Product Categories Purchased Online
• Wayflyer: Women Return Twice as Many Clothes as Men
• Happy Returns: Returns Happen Report, October 2023
• Baymard Institute: Apparel Sites and Sizing Information
• Marketplace: Your Waist Doesn't Lie, Your Pants Do (2010)
• Retail Brew: Why More Returns Are Ending Up in the Resale Channel
• Retail Brew: The Environmental Cost of Returns (2022)
• FashionUnited: Serial Returners and Return Emissions (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
• Zalando Research: SizeFlags, Reducing Size and Fit Related Returns
• Journal of Innovation & Knowledge: Fits Like a Glove? Size Finders and Fashion Returns
• INTO THE AM: Basic Tee fit ratings