Two causes of returns, only one of which you control
You return a garment because you misjudged your size, or because the brand misdescribed the garment. Measurements fix the first. Nothing you do fixes the second.
That distinction determines how much money you actually save.
The scale
US retailers processed $849.9 billion of returns in 2025, a 15.8% return rate, according to NRF and Happy Returns. The 2024 figure was 16.9% and $890 billion. Appriss Retail and Deloitte put 2024 lower at 13.2%, so methodologies differ.
Across all retail, 9% of returns are fraudulent, per NRF.
How much is fit-driven
Coresight Research, surveying 100 US apparel decision-makers in 2023, attributed 53% of returns to fit. McKinsey's 2019-2020 survey found 70% when poor fit and style are combined, though that figure merges two different things.
Be precise about one thing: the NRF publishes total return rates and the fraud share, but does not publish a fit-versus-other-reason breakdown. Any article claiming NRF says X% are fit-related is misreading their data.
What you can save
If a meaningful part of your returns come from uncertainty about your own size, measurements remove that source. You will stop ordering a medium because it said medium, and start ordering based on your waist.
What you cannot save
If a brand's chart is wrong, you will still be surprised. Research on over 1,000 garments across 50 UK brands found only 64% matched their own chart within 1 cm, with 4.2 cm average within-brand variance.
This is not a small effect. On a brand whose chart is off by 4 cm, knowing your measurements precisely still leaves you guessing.
The pragmatic expectation
Realistically, measurements might remove a third to a half of your fit-related returns and leave the rest. That is worth having, but it is not a fix.
- Expect fewer size-mistake returns.
- Expect the same returns when a brand misdescribes its garment.
- Expect the biggest savings once you have calibrated a few brands.
Where the real waste is
The environmental cost is larger than the consumer inconvenience. The European Environment Agency estimates 22 to 43% of returned clothing bought online in Europe is destroyed, and that 4 to 9% of all textiles placed on the EU market never get used, at 264,000 to 594,000 tonnes a year.
In the US, 85% of unwanted apparel ends up in landfill or incinerators, per the US EPA via USITC, and returns accounted for 8.4 billion pounds of landfill waste in 2023.
Those are structural figures. Your individual returns are a rounding error against them, which is precisely why incremental improvements still matter.