How to sell winter wear online in India: a 10-week season, done right

TL;DR

• • The window: roughly mid-November to end-January in the north; be live by early November, clearing by mid-February.
• • Buy: mostly no-size items; sweaters in few colours, all sizes, small numbers; kids’ sizes smallest of all.
• • Sizes: measure the garment flat and publish the numbers; set stock per size.
• • Returns: size exchanges within a stated window, not refunds; inner wear non-returnable, said plainly.
• • Shipping: check pin codes and delivery days to hill towns; press woollens flat because couriers charge for bulk.
• • February: sale prices and an expiring coupon on what must go; keep shawls and caps for next year.

The 10-week window, city by city

Winter is not one season across India. Roughly: Delhi and the NCR, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh buy from mid-November to late January, with December and January as the peak. Hill regions such as Himachal, Uttarakhand, Kashmir and the north-eastern hill towns buy earlier and keep buying into February. Kolkata and the east have a shorter, milder window. Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai buy light layers, if anything, so a full sweater range aimed there will sit.

What this means for a small seller: aim your Instagram posts, your ads if you run any, and your delivery promises at the north, and say your delivery area honestly if your courier does not reach the hills quickly. Have stock live by early November, because people start looking as soon as the evenings turn, and treat Republic Day week (Tuesday 26 January 2027) as your last full-price week before the clearance.

What to buy for a short season

Worked example of a first-season buy: say you have ₹30,000 for stock. Put ₹12,000 into caps, socks and mufflers (many pieces, sold as sets of three), ₹8,000 into shawls and stoles (one size, keeps for years), and ₹10,000 into sweaters in two colours across S to XL, two of each size. Nothing in that list is a gamble except the sweaters, and even those are only sixteen pieces. Reorder the size that sells; do not guess in October.

Worked example of a sweater’s margin: a sweater that costs you ₹450, ₹30 of packing, ₹90 delivery and a ₹26 payment fee (we use 2% in these examples; check your own gateway’s rate). Priced at ₹1,299, you keep ₹703. Now say one order in six comes back for a size exchange, and each exchange costs ₹180 in delivery both ways. That is ₹30 spread over every order, so you really keep about ₹673. The exchanges are the cost of selling sizes online; the size chart below is how you keep them to one in six and not one in three. How to count and reorder stock is in inventory management for small sellers.

Size charts that stop exchanges

A size chart that says “M fits chest 38–40” is a guess about the buyer’s body. A chart that says “M: chest 42 inches across, length 26 inches, sleeve 24 inches, relaxed fit” is a fact about the garment, and the buyer can hold a tape to a sweater they already own. Measure every size flat, on a table, and publish the numbers.

• Chest: measure across the garment just under the arms and double it.
• Length: from the highest point of the shoulder to the hem.
• Sleeve: from the shoulder seam to the cuff.
• Fit note: one line, “relaxed fit, order your usual size” or “fitted, go one up for layering”.
• Kids: give the age and the height the size fits, because a tall six-year-old wears an eight.
• Material and care: say what it is (acrylic, wool blend, pure wool) and whether it can be machine washed. A hand-wash-only sweater that shrinks is a return you cannot refuse.

On a SitesPlaced store, upload the chart as the product’s Info image and it opens as a Size Chart popup on the product page; you can rename that label under Settings → Pages & policies. Switch on stock per option under Settings → Catalog & fields, so each size has its own count and a sold-out size cannot be ordered. The same approach for kurtas and lehengas is in how to sell ethnic wear online.

Photos: knit, colour, and a person

• On a person, in daylight. A sweater on a hanger tells the buyer nothing about how it falls. Shoot it worn, front and back, and say the model’s height and the size they are wearing.
• One close-up of the knit. Buyers want to know if it is chunky or fine, and whether it will pill. Fill the frame with the fabric.
• Get the colour right. Woollens photograph darker and bluer than they are, especially maroon, navy and bottle green. Shoot near a window, not under a yellow bulb, and check the photo against the garment before you upload. “Colour not as shown” is the second most common reason winter wear comes back, after size.
• One flat lay with the label. It shows the shape and the brand or care label, and it is the photo you reuse for a sale slide in February.

The general method, with a phone, is in how to take better product photos.

Returns, exchanges and cash on delivery

Sizes mean exchanges, so decide the rules before the first order and put them on the product page, not only in a policy nobody reads.

• Offer a size exchange, not a refund, within a stated window (seven days from delivery is common), for unworn pieces with tags. Say who pays the return courier; many small sellers pay the second leg and ask the buyer to pay the first.
• Always replace or refund when the piece arrives damaged, or is not the colour or size the listing showed. That is your mistake, and arguing it costs more than the sweater.
• Inner wear and thermals are usually sold as non-returnable for hygiene. Say it in the product description in plain words.
• Cash on delivery brings orders in the north, and it also brings parcels refused at the door, which cost you the courier both ways. On a SitesPlaced store you can add an extra charge for COD under Settings → Checkout, or keep COD for cheaper items and ask for prepayment on a ₹2,000 coat. The COD vs prepaid calculator shows what a refused parcel costs you, and how to reduce RTO and fake COD orders goes through the fixes.

The free return policy generator drafts the page, and this return and refund policy template explains each line.

Shipping to cold-region cities

• Check the pin code first. Not every courier serves every hill town, and some that do take much longer. Look up serviceability for your main destinations before you promise a delivery date, and ask your courier for the delivery time to those cities specifically rather than the all-India average.
• Weather adds days. Fog in the north in December and January delays trains and flights. Add a day of slack to any date you publish, and put the honest range on the product page.
• Woollens are light but bulky, and couriers often charge for the size of the box as well as its weight. Press each piece flat in a poly bag, squeeze the air out, and use the smallest box it fits. Ask for the rate for your packed box, not the weight on the label.
• Set the delivery charge from that quote. Flat, free, or free above a value: the maths for each is in how to set shipping charges for your online store. A free-delivery line set a little above a single sweater’s price nudges the buyer to add the matching cap, and the cart on a SitesPlaced store shows a progress bar towards it.
• Packing from home, labels and pickups are covered in how to ship orders from home in India. Shiprocket and Shipmozo both connect to a SitesPlaced store on the free plan.

Clearing stock in February

By the second week of February the north is warming and nobody in Delhi is buying a sweater. What you have left falls into two piles: things that keep until next November without losing value (shawls, stoles, caps, plain knits in classic colours) and things that will not (kids’ sizes, because the child who would have worn them is a size bigger next year; a colour you will not reorder; anything with a trend in it). Keep the first pile. Clear the second, in this order.

• A sale price on the pieces that must go. On the product, set Original price to the old price and Price to the new one; the old price shows struck through on the card and the product page. Mark down the kids’ sizes and the odd colours, not the whole store.
• A coupon with an expiry date for the last week: “WINTER20, until 20 February”. The Expires field ends it by itself. Decide the Sale items rule so the coupon does not stack on the markdown unless you mean it to.
• Buy 2 Get 1 on caps and socks (a Growth sales booster) turns ₹299 orders into ₹598 ones and empties the small-item bins.
• Say it in the announcement bar: “Last of the winter stock, sizes going fast”, and when it is gone, change the bar rather than leaving a sale banner over an empty page.

Worked example: a sweater that cost you ₹450, marked from ₹1,299 to ₹899 in February, still keeps ₹311 after ₹30 of packing, ₹90 delivery and an ₹18 fee. Holding it until November instead ties up ₹450 for nine months and risks the colour looking tired. Clear it. Then write down what sold, what came back and what was left, because next year’s buy is built on this year’s numbers; the routine for that is in how to plan a year of sales for a small online store.

Putting it online this winter

Selling sizes through Instagram DMs is where exchanges come from: the buyer asks “will M fit me”, you guess, it doesn’t. Your own store puts the measured chart, the stock per size, the delivery days and the exchange rule on the product page, so the buyer decides with facts and you answer fewer messages.

On SitesPlaced, the store is free to open, with 0% commission: unlimited products and orders, UPI and cards through your own Razorpay, PhonePe or Cashfree account, cash on delivery with an optional extra charge, WhatsApp checkout, Shiprocket and Shipmozo. Stock per size, the size chart popup, sale prices, coupons with an expiry date, free delivery above a value, the announcement bar and pause ordering are all on the free plan. The Clothing Store is one of 16 free templates, and the store lives at an address like yourbrand.sitesplaced.site. The templates are compared in the best clothing store website templates, and the wider plan for a label is in how to start a clothing brand online in India.

From Starter (₹199/month, or ₹1,990 for a year) you get your own domain, no SitesPlaced badge, store analytics, and store pages that answer about 4× faster than on the free plan: about 75 ms instead of about 330 ms, measured on live paid stores on 28 September 2026. “Answer” means how soon the page starts arriving on the phone, before the photos load. For a ten-week season, paying ₹199 once for 30 days with no autopay, twice over, may be all you need; or use the code FREE7 for 7 days free when you set up autopay and cancel before the first charge. Growth (₹499/month) adds Buy X Get Y and the other sales boosters. Start at sitesplaced.com/start.

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