How a Good Bra Fitter Can Triple Your Business

Looking ahead
The pressure that face-to-face fashion retailers have been under to survive through the global pandemic has been well documented. In the UK, the number of bricks and mortar fashion stores closing was double the annual average in both 2020 and 2021. Reports from countries across the EU and from the major market that is the USA are equally sobering.

But enough of doom and gloom – let’s look at the good news! Yes, there is indeed, good news. As we start 2022, US store openings are forecast to exceed closures for the first time in 5 years (source: Coresight Research.) What’s more, while 65% of US shoppers will opt to buy their clothing online this year (according to Croud’s State of Online Fashion Report) recent research by Kantar found that 64% of spend on bras came from bricks-and-mortar stores in the first half of 2021 – despite ongoing coronavirus related restrictions.

Boom in face-to-face sales
Reassuringly, over the last year the underwear sector has been more resilient to the overall drop-off in sales than the rest of the fashion sector and seen less of a shift to online. Even though virtual bra fittings proved an important tool during lockdown, many lingerie shoppers are now favoring physical fittings again. Since its bricks and mortar stores reopened in April 2021, leading lingerie retailer and expert bra fitter Bravissimo, with 25 UK stores and a New York flagship, reported that 91% of its fittings have been done in person, and only 9% virtually. The number of customers being fitted at Bravissimo’s stores also rose by 26% compared with pre-pandemic levels. This is exactly in line with the feedback from many independent stores across the US and UK, who consistently report an uplift in face-to-face sales, with many customers having waited to be fitted in person.
‘Stores are more than stores,’ says Deborah Weinswig, Coresight chief executive officer who forecasts a boom in face-to-face retail this year. And in the fashion sector, lingerie stores are the cream of the crop.

Enter the bra-fitter
I have worked in and with retail and fashion businesses for years and I struggle to think of any other product category where consumers need help and expert advice more than in lingerie. Let’s be honest (because as industry professionals we all know this), the lingerie shopper hasn’t got a clue what they need - and often doesn’t even know they have a need at all!  Even products that simply must be tried on to be purchased such as wedding dresses and shoes, do not rely on the advice, knowledge and help of a face-to-face expert as much as bras do (most of us know our shoe size for example!) Step in the bra fitter – the individual with the power to triple your sales. If that sounds overly ambitious, hear it from the Retail Director of a large department store group whose lingerie team were trained in the Pudding bra fitting and sales methodology (aka the WOW FACTOR programme): ‘We are delighted with the results we have seen following the consultancy and training from Helen at Pudding. Our lingerie sales have increased significantly; the team are rejuvenated and the fit by sight method is wowing customers. We have doubled what we were doing versus a year ago with the same team and the same products, simply down to our sales and service approach in store and of course the bra fitting’

The WOW factor model
Quite simply, now is the time for brick-and-mortar lingerie stores to excel. Face to face shoppers have moved from browse mode to purpose mode. Visiting a physical store is no longer a weekend pastime - it has become an event.  Your customers need a reason to visit a physical store. A superior experience that adds real value to their lives is what will bring them in, make them buy, keep them coming back and get them shouting about your store to others.
While most clothing businesses strive to create that experience, lingerie stores have the answer sitting there already – bra fitting. That’s why after working with hundreds of lingerie stores over the years, I can confidently report that those who consistently are the winners, are the ones who invest in developing an outstanding sales and service model – what I call the WOW FACTOR model - with expert bra fitting right at the heart of it. Of course, pretty much all lingerie retailers offer a bra fitting service. These days, many online retailers offer bra fitting advice and video bra fitting too. Nothing new there. But what if I told you that the type of bra fitting service you offer can raise your conversion rate from the industry standard of 19% to a whopping 50% and can triple your average sale? Now that’s interesting.  

1. Adopt an expert bra fitting process. Tape measure or fit by sight?

While many expert bra fitters adopt the ‘fit by sight’ method, a significant proportion of stores, particularly bigger chains and those with a heavy online presence, use the tape measure technique. So, what are the pros and cons?

The proponents of fitting by sight argue that it is more accurate than fitting with a tape measure because:
- A tape measure is static, a breast is not
- A tape measure cannot accurately measure volume and shape e.g., a wide breast
- The tape measure result is subject to how the user holds the tape measure
- The tape measure technique is outdated: it was borne out of the need to add inches to the ribcage measurement to find the right band size when fabrics didn’t stretch the way they do now, or the need to go up in the band to accommodate a bigger breast when bras were only made in a-d cups.

In fact, many fitters believe the tape measure is the cause of the universal truth seen by bra fitters:  80% of women wearing a back size too big and a cup size too small.

However, for many businesses, it is not so straightforward. Fitting by sight requires not only a shift in training approach but also the right product range to offer the customer after the fitting – typically customers will move down in the back and up in the cup so the average size may move from a 36c to a 32f and of course your inventory needs to align to that.

Tape measure fitting requires less expertise & lends itself to selling limited size ranges with no involvement: customers simply buy the size they always have and go away satisfied, which can be tempting if you are a bigger provider with a large online presence.

The type of fitting technique you use is a strategic decision and every business must choose what works best for them. However, my years of running a high performing face to face lingerie business, and working with many other lingerie teams, has convinced me that fitting by sight wins out when the customer is in front of you either in person or virtually.

Why? Because, whatever the pros and cons – it is the ultimate ‘wow’ experience for customers. When you offer a ‘by sight’ fitting, you transform the way a woman looks and feels. You don’t just win a sale; you win a customer. A big customer (after all she usually needs to overhaul her lingerie drawer).  If you are really good you win a lifelong customer. And if you are really, really good you win an advocate.

More customers, buying more items, more frequently and telling more people. It’s a win win. Is that the type of business you want to be?


2. Put Bra Fitting at the centre of a proactive, service led sales model

When I train lingerie sales teams, I look beyond the bra fitting process. I work with bra fitters to identify the key behaviours underpinning the experiences where they have received the best customer feedback and achieved the biggest sales. Time and time again, fitters identify for themselves that the key behaviors defining their most successful interactions with customers are:

- ENGAGING THE CUSTOMER IN A COMPELLING WAY - Making a connection & getting to know them

- PROACTIVELY IDENTIFYING & MEETING THE CUSTOMERS NEEDS & WANTS – Including the ones they didn’t know about

- WOWING THE CUSTOMER & BROADENNG THEIR HORIZONS - Going the extra mile to meet their specific needs, being an expert and using that to wow them with something they didn’t expect or ask for

- BUILDING AN ONGOING RELATIONSHIP & IDENTIFYING FUTURE NEEDS & LEADS - Building a relationship where they are going to come back and become an advocate, not a one-off sale

It starts with bra fitting – but it goes far beyond that. I know from training bra fitters over the years that when we get all these right, we move from doing what the customer expects to what wows the customer. That is how we triple sales.

Here’s a very simple example of what the end result looks like and this is why I call my sales & service model training the WOW FACTOR programme:

3. Go omni-channel
In my experience with both face to face and online clients, the strong businesses are embracing the shift towards the online channel and giving customers the best of all worlds by being omni channel. Whether you are primarily online or primarily face to face, your customer and your business can gain real value by offering a consistent service at all touchpoints.

The beauty of fitting by sight without the need for a tape measure is that it can more easily be translated into a virtual fitting environment. Not only does this enable you to grow sales by extending your service to a new customer group, but in the face of returns rates as high as 50% or more in some online businesses, it is a low-cost way of reducing those returns while offering a service of real value and a point of differentiation. Whether you see yourself as bricks and mortar or online, there is a place for bra fitting within your offer if you wish to maximise sales and minimise returns.

What might the size of the prize be?

Understanding the current sales funnel and where you have opportunities to improve it is a helpful way to look at how far you can improve sales. For example, often sales teams feel like they don’t have enough people coming in store or tell me that you are engaging with everyone & just can’t get them to buy, but when I observe them objectively, I might find otherwise. The results can be surprising, and they help us to pinpoint where we need to focus.

The sales funnel looks at
•    How many people are walking past who fit our target market
•    How many of those do we get into the department/store
•    Once they are in the department/store how many of them do we engage with
•    How many of those engaged have a fitting
•    How many of those then fitted buy
•    What the average sale is
I find there is often room for improvement at each stage - and little improvements can lead to a big bottom-line improvement, as this example shows (see figure 1). In the example, store B ‘s sales funnel is based on the best practise I have seen in stores and trained into stores over the years (it is not made up!) Each improvement in each stage in the sales funnel adds up to more than a four-fold increase in sales.

As I always say to my clients, if we accept we are not perfect and aim even for half of this - that’s an increase I’d like to have.

What to do next

Be open minded.  If you offer a bra fitting service in your business, go away and ask if it is giving the customer what they expect, what they hope for or what wows them. Be prepared to accept that you can possibly improve and talk to an expert like our consultants at Pudding for some free initial advice.

If you don’t offer a bra fitting service – maybe as an online provider – then ask yourself if a modest investment in training to give your business the edge, increase average sales and reduce returns may just be worth a try.

The great thing is that in today’s world bra fitting training really is at your fingertips – there is no excuse for a less than par service or less than par sales. Whether you opt for traditional face to face training in store, or learn to be an expert bra fitter from the comfort of your own laptop, you can develop the formula for tripling sales today, wherever you are in the world.