Trying On New Sizes

All shoppers are not created equal—and that has proved to be lucrative to the companies that have carved out a niche business designing and selling apparel for women and men who don’t fall into the traditional size ranges.

An estimated 61 percent of adult Americans are classified as weighing more than standard body weight and an estimated 13 percent of children and adolescents are also above the norm, according to a 1999 study by the U.S. Surgeon General.

And a growing number of manufacturers and retailers are setting out to clothe non-standard-sized consumers.

There isn’t quite the same volume of information on smaller sizes, which represent about 10 percent of sales in the women’s apparel market, but anecdotal evidence suggests there is enough interest in the segment to keep manufacturers such as Los Angeles-based Karen Kane producing petites lines.

And retailer Mervyn’s California, a division of Target Corp., has recently entered the petites business with its Petite Style shop, which debuted this past January. Now it has doubled the inventory to 20 racks of clothing from private-label brands Hillard & Hanson and Cascade Blues as well as designer togs from Gloria Vanderbilt, Lee and Erika & Co. The California stores, which will expand by another 20 percent in October, will carry Norton McNaughton from the Jones Apparel Group and Levi’s.

“We launched in January and knew by March we’d expand judging by the positive response,” said Leanne Furman, spokeswoman for Mervyn’s. “We’re pleased with the performance and are very interested in continuing to expand the section.”

But it’s been the success of companies such as Lane Bryant in the plus-size market that have sparked interest in the segment and encourage manufacturers and retailers to look for untapped niches within the market such as junior plus, lingerie and men’s furnishings.

And the Internet has proven a valuable tool for reaching specialsized consumers as manufacturers and retailers connect with their target customers either through e-commerce sites or by sending them to a bricks-and-mortar location.

Youth Market

Junior plus has been the key growth segment in special sizes in recent years, thanks to shifting demographics and a junior apparel sector eager to develop new business—and able to capitalize on that new business quickly.

According to the June 2001 American Demographics, the national health and nutrition survey, 14 percent of teens ages 12–19 and 13 percent of children ages 6–11 are potential plus-size junior customers.

Historically, most plus-sized teens have shopped at department stores and specialty stores such as Lane Bryant. Now, teen retailers are seizing on the potential of the junior plus-size market.

Hot Topic launched its Torrid concept last year with six stores to cater to the needs of larger-sized women and it’s expanded cautiously. The retailer, which focuses on music-inspired and edgy clothing, plans to open 15 Torrid stores this year, said Christine Thompson, marketing director for the City of Industry, Calif.-based company. So far, future stores haven’t been determined, she said.

As with other new launches, the company initially didn’t hit the merchandise jackpot and has since tweaked the offering at Torrid, Thompson said. Torrid used to primarily offer its edgier Hot Topic brands including Lip Service and Serious but now also sells items from Paris Blues, Hot Kiss and Z Cavaricci.

“Now, there’s less overlap with Hot Topic,” Thompson said. “We’re doing a very good bohemian business with peasant tops that wouldn’t be found at Hot Topic. We definitely have edgier fashions in Torrid than other stores, but we’ve just moved more feminine-focused items there as well.”

Still, the company said in its quarterly report for the period ending May 4, 2002, merchandise margins fell 0.5 percent, partly due to “higher markdowns” in the Torrid stores, resulting from minimum merchandise purchases required “in excess of what was needed for the small store base.” To meet the minimum needs, Torrid’s private-label merchandise now accounts for 70 percent of its sales, compared to Hot Topic’s figure of 25 percent.

Retailer Mervyn’s rolled out its junior plus-size store-within-a-store this past June, carrying Angels, Aqua Blues, Gloria Vanderbilt, Zanadi and Self Esteem geared to size 16–24 frames. It also introduced husky sizes for boys, featuring High.

And Los Angeles-based denim and sportswear manufacturer Tyte saw an opportunity to expand beyond its junior customer into the junior plus-size category.

The company, which is a division of Los Angeles-based 4WHATITSWORTH Inc., will incorporate its most popular styles and translate them into a collection for girls sizes 14–24, said Halpern.

“The young junior customer can be very sensitive about her fashion,” said Halpern.

One of the challenges facing junior plus-size manufacturers is choosing the right department to display their collections. Halpern said the young junior customer might be discouraged from buying plus-size clothing if she has to shop in a segregated area. Some department stores that carry plus sizes for juniors have decided to just add them to their existing junior collections (which usually range from sizes 4 to 13)—in other words, expand their sizes from 4 to 25—so there is less attention placed on junior customers who buy plus-size apparel.

Halpern said he got the idea to introduce the collection from a department store buyer who was looking for a larger size jean for junior customers. Last spring, the company created six styles and tested them at specialty chains and department stores.

“After we tested the collection at the department stores we discovered it was a completely untapped market,” said Halpern.

For Back-to-School, the company doubled its collection to include 12 styles in fabrications including stretch denim and stretch twill with novelty washes and treatments.

Halpern said sandblasting and drawstring and cargo pants (which have pockets that are strategically placed away from the hips) are some of the Back-to-School looks juniors can choose from.

And some companies are finding opportunities in the children’s market as well.

Suffern, N.Y.-based UMFwear (Unlock My Future) is a plus-size denim collection for girls, with sizes ranging from 5+ to 12+ for girls ages 5–10.

The company, which is currently working on a boy’s plus-size collection, is finding a niche for itself in the special- size market by offering silhouettes with a wider waistband and running slightly shorter than most childrenswear collections.

Shawna Charles started the collection with her mother, Mary, a few months ago. The line is sold at the Charles’ family boutique, Mary and Martha’s Maternity and Childrenswear in Ahoskie, N.C., and on the Internet at www.pluskidz.com.

As a retailer, the Charleses learned quickly that there was a market for plus-size children.

“Most preteen plus-size clothing, it usually fits in the waist and thighs but it’s usually too long,” explained Shawna Charles. “Then the parents either cut it shorter (which might take away from the styling) or pay to have a $40 pair of children’s pants altered.”

New Niches

But junior plus isn’t the only untapped niche in the market. Manufacturers and retailers are finding new business in plus-size lingerie and men’s furnishings.

David Cole, president of Big Girl’s Bras, etc., reports that business has been so brisk in the plussize lingerie business that the online retailer has added men’s and will be soon adding men’s apparel.

“Men’s is not a major growth area, but it’s one that we are looking to enter,” said Cole. “We’ll be developing it over the next 18 months. We’ve had underwear and men’s intimate apparel on our site for about a year, but in the last three months, we added a broader selection.”

Cole said that the company has been looking for specific items such as boxers size XXL and above.

“We can find small and large everywhere, but we’ve only been able to identify one or two companies that go up to XXL, and we’re still looking for companies that will supply us with larger than 2X sizes,” said Cole.

San Francisco-based manufacturer Joe Boxer used to specialize in those sizes for boxers but discontinued sizes above XXL before inking an exclusive retail deal with Kmart last summer, according to Colette Sipperly, vice president of public relations and marketing of the Windsong Apparel Group, the parent company of Joe Boxer.

Sipperly said that plus-size sleepwear for women will go into Kmart, but only the men’s boxers in XXL will go. Gary Leon, senior vice president of sales for Joe Boxer, said that those sizes were discontinued because of poor performance.

“The XXL boxer business never represented more than 2 percent of our total boxer sales,” said Leon. “The crux of the business in boxers is done in medium to extra large—over 92 percent, in fact.”

Both Leon and Cole agree that such items are made for specialty stores.

“It’s still a specialty store item,” said Cole. “You’re not going to find the larger sizes in too many department stores. If you do find them, the selections will be limited to a couple of selections, like cotton briefs.”

Big Girls’ Bras, etc., grew by more than 400 percent in its second year of business and closed out the third quarter of 2001 with more than 250 percent growth. Cole attributes that growth to the fact that the larger-size categories for both men and women have the highest rate of growth.

“The only segment with real growth over the past year has been the plus-size segment,” said Cole. “It grew about 5 to 10 percent, where others may have grown by 2 percent.”

Cole said that the company will be adding more merchandise, including men’s boxers, briefs, T-shirts, muscle shirts, robes and anything that can be classified as intimate apparel on its Web site [www.biggerbras.com].

Online Opportunities

The movement has seen a raft of specialsizes Web sites pop up in recent years that can present a one-stop shopping source for their customers.

PlusSize.com founder Jeff Recker stumbled upon the opportunity when he and his partner bought the domain name a few years ago and discovered that hundreds of women were visiting the name-only site.

“We didn’t even know what the plus-size market was,” he said. No longer. The Cincinnati- based portal site, with links to such retailers as Lane Bryant Catalog and Lands’ End and a virtual body model, now receives about 200,000 visitors a month. Recently, it partnered with Frederick’s of Hollywood, which sells lingerie in sizes 1X–3X and full-figure bras up to 42F and recently launched a custom bra site for sizes up to 50L.

“This provides additional outreach to our customers since not every plus-size customer will walk into a Frederick’s of Hollywood,” said Frederick’s chief executive officer, Linda LoRe.

Retailer Sue Papilion said each of her Tall Etc. stores lands an average of five new customers per week thanks to the company’s Web site [www.tallwomen.com].

“When you advertise to only 1 or 2 percent of the population, your expenses outweigh any benefits,” she said, adding, “So generally speaking, most people find us on the Internet.”

Tall Etc. caters to ladies 5 feet 10 inches and taller who need apparel with longer inseams and torsos. The 11-store chain based in Pasadena, Calif., has grown 50 percent in the past two years, ringing up $4.2 million in sales, according to Papilion, who owns the company with Marian McMahon.

Some of that new online business comes from techsavvy juniors who represent the biggest growth for the company.

“It’s now 25 percent of our business,” Papilion said, noting that some of her strongest junior vendors are Tyte and One Step Ahead.

Papilion said there isn’t much competition from other tall stores except for Canada-based retailer Tall Girl. And most department stores don’t cater to the tall market.

For apparel companies, there’s often a learning curve in finding their niche in the plus-size market.

CurvyClothes.com, which sells clothing in sizes 14–22, launched this past April, and co-founder Jan Caplan already plans to shift her focus.

“We’re finding our dresses and casualwear selling two to one to our career line,” she said. “Because of that, we’re planning on offering more holiday dresses and casual sexy tops for the holiday as opposed to doing a career suit line.”

Another observation is regarding the type of customers the site is attracting—those on the higher end of the size scale, according to Caplan.

“The 14 to 16 customer doesn’t feel like she’s a plus-size and still shops at Macy’s,” she said. “So, we may shift our ratio and cut less clothing in the 14 to 16 range.”

Frederick’s of Hollywood’s LoRe said the plus-size customer represents a steady business for her company, but she realizes that trends and demographics can shift, meaning the plus-size market may not always be so viable.

“We’re marketers and we’ll change with the market,” she said.

Tackling Sizing Issues With Technology

With the emergence of online shopping and a more global marketplace in general, apparel designers have been put in the welcome but troublesome position of having to accommodate a wider customer base, which means outfitting a broader range of consumers of different shapes and sizes. In addition, there’s a more niche-oriented manufacturing base emerging that calls for more customized production. To deal with these scenarios, apparel companies are turning to technology for help.

CAD/CAM software providers including PAD System Technologies, Tukatech Inc. and others have been bringing new technologies to the marketplace, which are aimed at making better-fitting clothes in addition to addressing the needs of the special-orders business.

“Sizing is the No. 1 reason for returns for Internet transactions,” noted Kristin Gloviak, director of PAD’s U.S. operations, based in the California Market Center. “There are an infinite number of sizes now. You can’t even begin to cover the entire customer base, and yet most companies will only have eight to 12 sizes.”

Seeing more demands from customers in Asia as well as specialized businesses including suit makers and uniform manufacturers, PAD has developed new tools for its Master series of CAD/CAM products, which allows users to make alterations at the click of a mouse.

“We’re able to use a tool called ’frame view,’ which allows us to interface with Microsoft Excel software to do mass customization,” explained Gloviak. In PAD’s case, designers can import a slate of measurements, from bustline to inseam, into an Excel spreadsheet and make lineitem alterations to customer specifications. The software integrates the changes and makes the adjustments accordingly.

Gloviak said she has been using these features for customers such as wetsuit manufacturers, which require accurate specifications because of the tight neoprene they use. Another client that makes super-tight latex dresses also benefits from such programs, she noted.

“You’re also seeing situations in which one company can have customers in Asia wanting a certain product, yet they are not going to fit the same as someone in Idaho,” Gloviak explained. The end result is significant savings in time and money, she added.

Tukatech addresses similar issues in its new Modulate package of software, which creates databases of measurements that can be defined and stored, allowing the program to make adjustments automatically.

“We’ve also developed it so you can take an image file of a fabric, for instance, and lay it over the patterns to make a virtual model with our 3-D draping utility,” said Harry Wessels, Tukatech’s senior CAD developer.

The sizing issue has been a concern for manufacturers for ages, and companies including Levi’s and Nike Inc. have embarked on sizing programs. Levi’s Original Spin allows consumers to create jeans to their own specifications, and Nike’s NikeID program allows them to do the same thing with that company’s offerings. Now, as e-commerce takes off with new players such as Amazon.com, sizing is becoming a bigger issue because these sellers want to keep returns to a minimum.

Customizing sizes is also easier now as robotized cutters can take data and cut to precision. And as prices of these cutters come down to affordable levels (from more than $100,000 a few years ago to under $25,000 now), more apparel makers are able to become automated and compete with the fast turns and low prices coming from offshore.

The next step for companies such as PAD is to capitalize on the technology as a whole even if it means going outside the realm of apparel production. To give its users a better perspective of garment fit, PAD has partnered with animation producer Maya Design Inc. to use state-of-the-art 3-D technology, which Gloviak described as something that blows away anything the apparel industry is using.

“Apparel companies can’t afford this right now,” she said. PAD is making it available through its PAD Service Bureau. —Robert McAllister

Size USA Coming to Los Angeles

TC2, a Cary, N.C.-based technology firm catering to the textile and apparel industries, is teaming with Levi’s, Lands’ End, Milliken and North Carolina State University to kick off Size USA, a nationwide sizing survey that ultimately should help apparel manufacturers produce better-fitting clothing.

TC2, which owns a light-emitting 3-D body measurement technology, is placing body scanners in 10 cities including Los Angeles this summer at various shopping centers, college campuses and other locations to fit up to 12,000 male and female subjects between the ages of 18 and 65. The data will be analyzed and provided to apparel makers and other concerns such as the automotive, aerospace and furniture industries to improve ergonomics in production.

Dissatisfaction with apparel fit has been a major issue among the shopping public and a comprehensive size and shape survey has not been conducted in the United States for more than 30 years, according to TC2 researchers. The company recently completed a similar survey in the United Kingdom.

The initial Size USA surveys will take place at the University of Missouri on Aug. 26 and JCPenney in Dallas on Sept. 16.

Companies and those interested in being survey participants can register at www.sizeusa.com. —Robert McAllister