The Bleed Test
Free contribution margin calculator for DTC clothing brands. See which sizes make money and which ones lose it on every sale.
Your profit dashboard tells you a product is profitable. It's lying to you. It's averaging your sizes. Your medium funds the business and your XXL bleeds on every sale, same product, totally different economics. Enter one product below, starting with just your selling price, and see the truth, size by size. One number that'll make your stomach drop.
One product. One number. Let's go.
We start from real apparel benchmarks (COGS, shipping, returns, ad cost) so you get a credible answer now and refine after. Nothing connects to your store. This is one snapshot you control.
How this is calculated
Most profit tools stop at the product level and average every size into one number. This calculator does the opposite. It computes contribution margin 3 (CM3) for each individual size, because that's the only level at which margin is actually true for an apparel brand.
For every size, CM3 is:
− COGS on kept units
− dead stock written off on returns
− payment processing fees (charged on every order, kept by the processor on refunds)
− fulfilment & outbound shipping (every order ships once)
− return shipping & restocking on returned units
− customer acquisition cost (you paid for the order whether or not it stuck)
= CM3 for that size
A size is flagged bleedingwhen its CM3 is negative. It loses money on every order, even if the product's blended gross margin looks healthy. That gap between the dashboard number and the per-size truth is exactly the blind spot Revnce was built to close.
Questions founders ask
Why does my profit dashboard show the wrong margin?
Profit dashboards report margin at the product level by averaging across every size. But each size has different economics: different demand, different return rates, and therefore different true margin. Your medium can fund the business while your XXL loses money on every order, and the blended number hides it inside one healthy-looking figure.
What is CM3 (contribution margin 3) for apparel?
CM3 is what a clothing brand actually keeps from a sale after the variable costs of making it happen: cost of goods sold (COGS), payment processing fees, fulfilment and outbound shipping, marketing / customer acquisition cost (CAC), and the full cost of returns: return shipping, restocking labour, and dead stock that can't be resold. CM1 is revenue minus COGS, CM2 adds fulfilment and fees, and CM3 adds marketing and returns. CM3 is the number that tells you whether a size makes money.
How do returns destroy margin on specific sizes?
A returned order still cost you to acquire, process, ship out, ship back, and restock. A share of returned units can't be resold. Larger and smaller sizes (XS, XL, XXL) typically return at much higher rates than core sizes. A size with a healthy gross margin can swing negative once its return rate and the full reverse-logistics cost are applied. That's why margin has to be measured per size, after returns.
Which sizes should a clothing brand make more of or reorder?
Reorder and scale the sizes with the highest CM3 (the ones genuinely funding the business), and cut, reprice, or stop running ads to the sizes with negative CM3. Size-level contribution margin tells you what to make more of, what to reorder, and where to stop spending, instead of guessing from a blended product-level number.
One product. One day. You typed it in yourself.
Revnce does this for every size of every product, connected to your real numbers, and tells you exactly what to do. Every day or every week, you choose. The free tool shows you the wound. Revnce closes it.
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