H&M Says Demand for Plus Sizes Wasn't There. Let's Look Closer.

When H&M pulled 3XL and 4XL from its US women's range, the reason the brand gave, as reported by Bloomberg, was simple: "We have chosen to remove sizes 3XL and 4XL, as we have seen that demand for these has not been as great." It is a reasonable explanation. Retailers make decisions on sales data all the time, and on the surface this looks like one of them. But the longer I sat with that sentence, the more I kept asking: what exactly is H&M measuring when it says "demand"?

Here is the problem with using sales as proof of demand. When a brand decides a size is not selling well and stops investing in it, restocking it or promoting it, sales for that size will fall no matter what customers want. Think about what a customer sees once a size is being phased out: it is harder to find on the rack, harder to find online, and barely shown on the product page. Naturally, less of it gets bought. That is not proof that people stopped wanting it. It is what happens when a brand makes something harder to find and harder to choose.

So when H&M says demand "wasn't as great," the question is: compared to what? Was that measured before the sizes were reduced, or after?

And, more importantly, what happened to the customers who used to buy those sizes? Have they left the brand? Are they waiting, hoping the sizes come back? Have some given up and started shopping with a competitor? A sales report cannot answer any of that. It records what a customer bought, not what she wanted, or what she searched for and could not find.

I have spent the last few months studying this same pattern across West Africa's fashion industry.

Earlier this year I audited eleven of the region's most recognised fashion brands to understand how well they help a customer know whether something will fit before she buys it. I looked at size charts, fit notes on product pages, pre-purchase support, and return policies that build a buyer's confidence. The average score across all eleven brands was 41 out of 100. Some had size charts, some had return policies, one had a WhatsApp number customers could message with questions, but none of them had connected any of it to their sales. Collectively, they are losing close to ₦38 million every month, largely to abandoned purchases and wrong-size returns.

The specific problem there was not H&M's. It was unclear information, not a cut in sizes. Even so, both point to the same pattern. Brands can see that sales dropped, but very few can explain what caused the drop. And without that explanation there is no way to tell the difference between a customer who did not want the product and a customer who wanted it but never got what she needed to buy it with confidence.

So if sales alone cannot tell those two customers apart, what can?

Some of the answers are already in the building: returns data, customer service messages, website searches. Most brands collect all of it. Few connect it to the sizing question.

Start with returns. A brand may know that 500 items came back, but how many were returned because the customer changed her mind? How many were the wrong size? How many customers ordered two or three sizes because they were not confident which one would work?

Or look at what happens after a brand stops carrying a customer's size. Does she buy a smaller size instead? Does she stop shopping with the brand? Does she complain? A brand that tracks this can tell the difference between losing demand and losing a customer. Most cannot, because there is no process for following up once a customer stops buying, and no way to know whether she left for a competitor, gave up on the category, or is waiting for her size to return.

Some demand exists before a customer buys anything at all: a message to customer support asking about a product, a search for a size that no longer exists on the site. Both are signals of what a customer wants, and neither makes it into a sales report, because a sales report counts only what was bought, not what was asked for. Sometimes a customer states her demand directly, by joining a waitlist or requesting a size that is out of stock. No interpretation is needed there. The request is the demand. Brands need a better question than "did this sell?" The question that matters is "did we lose demand, or did we lose the customer?"

This is not only a plus-size story. It is a pattern I see across retail. A brand looks at what sold, decides that outcome is the full explanation, and never checks what shaped it.

One brand stops making a colour because "it wasn't moving." But was it unwanted, or was it rarely restocked? Another sees returns rising and assumes people did not like the product, without checking whether the product page gave customers enough information to choose the right size. In most cases, what sold gets treated as proof of what people wanted, when it is often just proof of what the brand chose to stock and display. This is how a brand makes a decision, then points to the sales afterwards as if the sales had made the decision for it. A sale confirms that a purchase happened. It does not confirm why it happened, or why it did not. Mistaking one for the other is how a brand convinces itself that customers rejected a product, when the brand made that product harder to choose.

H&M may be right. Demand for 3XL and 4XL may have fallen within its customer base. But even if that is true, the sales number alone does not explain why.

There are two very different reasons a product stops selling. Either customers stopped wanting it, or the brand made it harder to buy. Before cutting a size, a colour or a product line and calling it optimisation, a brand needs to know which of those two is true. Most cannot separate "this didn't sell" from "we made this hard to buy."

I am now researching how many of these "optimisation" decisions fix the right problem, and how many create a new one. The cost of that gap shows up in the wrong sizes cut, the wrong products discontinued, and customers pushed out under the label of efficiency.

Before that work is published, do this first: think about the last size, colour or product your brand stopped offering, and check whether you actually know why customers stopped buying it, or whether you assumed you did.

Hold on to that answer. It is going to matter.