# How to Match Sizes and Categories When Crosslisting Clothes

> This is a hands-on method for determining the correct sizes and categories when crosslisting on Poshmark, eBay, Mercari, Depop, Etsy and Facebook Marketplace, and includes a reusable mapping sheet.

- Source: https://www.primelister.com/blog/how-to-match-sizes-and-categories-when-crosslisting-clothes
- Author: Carmen Jones, Customer Support, PrimeLister
- Published: 2026-10-26
- Reading time: 8 min

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In order to match sizes and categories, you will need to translate from the item being sold (not from the first listing you made). To do this, write down the size and measurements once, and then pick the closest option for the categories and sizes on the various pickers. The most important thing here is the size type. Petite, plus, juniors and kids sizes are all the same size letter, but are classified and filtered separately by buyers.

## What you need before you open a single size picker

Crosslisting messes up the most at the size and category step, because nothing aligns. You wrote a good Poshmark listing and copied it to Mercari. Now, the size dropdown offers options that do not align with what you selected. Most people just guess and pick the closest thing. That’s what leads to a women’s medium jacket being filed under juniors or a size 8 dress being listed only under letter sizes.

Instead, you will need to stop guessing and translate from the item being sold. Prepare the following for reference:

- The item being sold with the size tag visible. You need to note exactly what is printed, including any letters like P, W, T or J, as well as a second size like M (8-10).
- A soft measuring tape. Pit-to-pit across the chest. Shoulder seam to seam. Sleeve length from the shoulder seam to the cuff. Body length from the base of the collar to the hem.
- A blank piece of paper or a simple spreadsheet with one row per marketplace. This is your mapping sheet.
- Your logins for each marketplace so you can see the category and size pickers to familiarize yourself with the wording.

The mapping sheet is the part that most sellers skip but is the part that saves the most time. You fill it in by hand once for each type of item you sell often. After that every new listing for that type is a lookup, not a decision. If you sell less than 200 items and mostly in a few categories you will end up with 5 to 6 mapping sheets that cover almost everything.

Know the mismatches, because this is where items get lost. The biggest mismatch is when size is expressed numerically versus when it is expressed via letters. A size 8 is usually a medium in US women’s sizing, but brands vary, so be sure to record both the measurements and the size shown on the tag. Juniors sizes (1, 3, 5 and 7) are cut smaller than misses sizes and therefore a juniors large is not a women’s large. Kids sizes 14/16 or XL (14) overlap with women’s xs and s and should be listed in the kids category. Plus sizes (1X, 2X, 16W) should be in the plus size category. Some pickers like to separate tall and petite sizes.

## Steps to translate one item across every marketplace

Work in the order from the item to the marketplace. Always do one marketplace fully before moving to the next and record what you picked along the way.

1. Always read the tag and record the size exactly as it is shown, including a letter suffix or a secondary size.
2. Decide what size type it is: regular (misses), petite, plus, tall, juniors, maternity or kids. If the brand doesn’t say, go with your judgement based on the size chart or the brand’s intended customer.
3. Measure and record pit-to-pit, shoulders, arm length, and the full length of the item (lying flat). Record all measurements in inches.
4. Name the item with plain, simple terms. Example: “women's long sleeve tee, plain v-neck” or “women’s joggers” or “denim women’s jacket.”
5. Open the first marketplace’s category picker and select the department, then the garment type, then the most specific subcategory. Write the full path on your sheet.
6. Open the first marketplace’s size picker and select the size type, if any, before selecting the size.
7. Select the size that matches the tag. If the picker offers sizes in a format that differs from the size on the tag, use the brand chart to convert, and write down the conversion on your sheet.
8. If the marketplace offers other size or fit fields, fill those out as well, since buyers can filter listings by those.
9. Write the tag size and the four measurements in the first two lines of the description on each marketplace, in the same order.
10. Repeat steps 5 to 9 for each of the other marketplaces and write the full path and size choices on the sheet.
11. Search through each marketplace as a buyer would, applying department, garment type, and size filters. Make sure the listing appears.

Step 11 is the one that catches mistakes. A listing that does not show up when you filter for women’s jackets, size M is invisible to most of the buyers that would want to see and purchase it. If it does not show up, the category or size type is usually the reason, so check those two fields first.

When an item does not easily fit in any subcategory, pick the subcategory that buyers will browse first and put the other term in the title. It is important to not pick an unrelated subcategory to stand out. To buyers, it will look like you miscategorized it and can get you in trouble.

## Worked example: one women's denim jacket on six marketplaces

I did the steps with a women’s Levi’s trucker jacket and showed the results for each marketplace. Trucker jackets and denim jackets are very popular and usually sell well.

I included a table that shows the marketplace mapping sheet. Treat the paths as suggestions and copy the words shown in the marketplace picker.

| Marketplace | Category path to look for | Size type field | Size chosen |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Poshmark | Women > Jackets & Coats > Jean Jackets | Standard (not Plus, Petite or Juniors) | M |
| eBay | Women > Women's Clothing > Coats, Jackets & Vests | Size Type: Regular | Size: M, plus Style: Jean Jacket in item specifics |
| Mercari | Women > Coats & jackets > Jean jackets | None separate; note regular fit in description | M |
| Depop | Womenswear > Coats and jackets, denim subcategory if offered | None separate | M |
| Etsy | Clothing > Women's Clothing > Jackets & Coats | Size attribute in listing details | M, with US 8-10 noted |
| Facebook Marketplace | Women's clothing, jackets or coats | Size field where shown | M |

There were three instances in this listing that required a judgment call. On eBay, in the size type field there was Regular, Petite, Plus, Tall and Juniors. Leaving that field blank is tempting, but buyers that filter by Regular will miss the listing. I set it to Regular. On Etsy, size was an attribute rather than a single drop-down, and a lot of buyers there shop by the numeric size, so in addition to M, I added US 8-10. On Mercari and Depop there was no size type field, so the first field was women’s regular fit, tag M, and fits like a US 8-10.

The descriptions all started the same on all six: Tag size M. Pit to pit 20 in, shoulders 16 in, sleeve 23 in, length 21.5 in. When a buyer compares jackets on various apps, they see the same numbers everywhere so they know what to expect and helps reduce returns.

I took about 25 minutes to post the first jacket. The second denim jacket, with the paths already made, only took about 10 minutes. Acc.) They say the third jacket would take 10 minutes again if it was a Juniors L from a teen brand, as the sheet shows the paths it would take to differentiate from the other jackets.

## Checklist to confirm each listing is findable

Items are finished when the sellers have a listing that buyers can find when filtering by the following attributes: Department, type of garment, size. Do this after each crosslisted item or the first 10 items in a new category until the paths are shown to be false.

- The department is the type of garment even if photo styling is different. So, a women’s jacket worn by a man is still women’s.
- The subcategory is the most specific that fits the type of garment on each marketplace.
- The size type is filled in where ever a field exists: regular, petite, plus, tall, juniors or kids, always.
- Juniors and kids items are not listed in women’s to reach more buyers. If that is the case a note is added to say it fits like a women’s XS or S.
- If a tag shows a size in numerals, letters or both, describe both, using the brand chart conversion you used.
- The first two lines of each description include tag size and four measurements in identical wording.
- Since eBay’s item specifics include size, type, style and material to feed eBay filters, they’re included as well.
- You searched each marketplace using size and category filters to see if the listing appeared in the results.
- The mapping sheet has a row for any new marketplace path you found, so the next step is a lookup.

If you sell less than 200 items a year and list just a few a day, checking items off a list is a reasonable method. It takes about two minutes per item to do the checklist if a sheet exists to organize the information. The time that adds up is not the checking, but the retyping: entering the same information six times, and remembering to pull the item from five apps the moment it sells on the sixth.

Placing the sheet where it will be visible while listing is important. A printed page clipped next to your photo setup is better than a file that you have to open. Update it when a marketplace renames a category, which happens a few times a year, and date the change so you know which listings were made under the old path.

## Crosslist one item to six marketplaces with PrimeLister

Your mapping sheet helps determine which size and category to choose; it doesn't help with entering a listing several times and not being able to sell it twice. That's where PrimeLister comes in. It lets you build a listing once and then carry it to the other marketplaces, and helps you spend your time on the size and category fields in your mapping sheet rather than rewriting descriptions and measurements.

- Posting to Poshmark, eBay, Mercari, Depop, Etsy and Facebook Marketplace from one listing to allow the jacket to reach as many buyers as possible.
- Inventory sync with auto-delisting, allowing the jacket to be sold on Mercari and come down from the other 4 marketplaces automatically.
- Bulk actions on multiple listings, to edit several listings in the same way, for example if a marketplace changes the name of a category and you have to rename several listings to the new name.
- A free find-duplicates tool to detect when the same item is listed twice on a marketplace due to careless crosslisting.
- Analytics to show which items have sold, and how long items are listed for, to help identify which categories sell and which don't, and see if product mapping could be improved.

The Poshmark bot and Depop bot each offer a free 7 day trial, and no credit card is required.