California Apparel News

Ellen Shing’s store, Lula Lu in San Mateo, Calif., caters to a niche within a niche.

Shing specializes in petite lingerie for small-busted customers of all heights and frames. Shing opened her store in 2005 after she and her friends searched fruitlessly for petite-size bras. Lula Lu carries about 25 bra brands ranging from sizes 38AA and 32AA to 36C. But still there were some women who could not find the perfect bra. So last year, Shing developed her own line of bras, Lula Lu Petites, to sell in her boutique. She plans to start wholesaling the line this June. “The designs of our bras are based on the feedback we got from the customers,” Shing said.

The debut collection included two basic T-shirt bras and a lacy bra that comes in basic and fashion colors. “Some people want to look bustier,” Shing said. “Some people want to look natural. Providing variety is the main thing for me.”

Petite-size Shing was not alone in her search for lingerie in smaller sizes. Two other California-based women recently launched petite-size bra lines after similarly unsuccessful searches.

Emily Lau, a former TV producer for The History Channel and the Discovery Channel, ended her quest for the perfect petite push-up bra with the launch of her line, The Little Bra Co., last March. Jane Alden Hodgdon, a former marketer and event planner, bowed her molded-cup line, the Itty Bitty Bra, earlier this year to provide an affordable basic alternative to the only other bra she found that fit, by La Perla.

Untapped market

Shing says that the influx of entrepreneurs comes at a time when some big-name brands have scaled back their petite-size offerings. Without naming names, Shing described her experience with one prominent foundations company: “When I started a few years ago, they had quite a few styles—maybe 8 or 10 styles. Now I think they pretty much got rid of all of them except for one body style, and they just repackage it with daisies or polka dots. It’s the same bra they keep using, and it doesn’t work for everybody.”

Lingerie retailers who specialize in fitting bras for all sizes agree that there are not as many options for the petite-size customer. “I have a lot of customers who are size 28 [band] and they have a really hard time,” said Yolaida Duran, co-owner of the 10-year-old lingerie shop Alla Prima in San Francisco. “There aren’t very many manufacturers who make a size 28.” Alla Prima stocks high-end European brands such as La Perla, Andres Sarda, Eres, Aubade and Chantelle.

Duran credited the increased attention to and awareness of a wider variety of bra fits and sizes to talk-show host Oprah Winfrey’s well-remembered show about finding the perfect-fitting bra. “Those of us who had been for years asking for smaller band sizes or larger cup sizes or different kinds of bras finally got what we wanted because [the “Oprah” show] was such a phenomenon that everyone had to pay attention,” Duran said. “Manufacturers saw the great need and opportunity to increase their sales.”

It is as difficult to fit extremely petite women as it is to fit extremely plus-size women, Duran said, but manufacturers have been slower to respond to petite-size needs.

“They tend to be the manufacturers of larger cups that are responding to the question of fit because people still don’t think of small cups as having a problem with fit,” Duran said. “The assumption is, ’You’re small. You’re not going to spend as much money on a bra because you don’t need a bra.’ Maybe that’s a segment of the population that’s sort of left behind a little bit.”

Connie Esposito’s store, A Perfect Fit Fine Lingerie in Tustin, Calif., was known for her extensive size offerings “all the way up to Ks.” She started stocking petite-size lingerie, including styles from The Little Bra Co., after several customer requests for smaller sizes. “The Little Bra Co. is the first line to go out the door faster than anyone,” said Esposito, who added that smaller sizes account for “maybe a quarter of my business.” Esposito said The Little Bra Co.’s bras are successful because they don’t gap, which is a common problem when fitting smaller sizes.

Lau, who developed The Little Bra Co.’s lightly padded push-up style, elaborated on the engineering: “The back is cut smaller. The cups are closer together to get more cleavage for a smaller-proportion woman.” Fashion was as important to Lau as the fit. Styles include a sexy red lace “Lucia” plunge style and a mocha lace “Ethel” bra. “I could find bras that fit, but they weren’t very attractive. I wanted colors, a little bit of lace,” said Lau, whose company is based in Los Angeles’ Toluca Lake neighborhood.

The Itty Bitty Bra’s approach is a simple, streamlined look. The Irvine, Calif.–based company’s molded-cup underwire bra is available in solid basic colors and polka-dot and leopard prints. “Even when you’re petite and small-busted, you still want a little bit of something, unlike a bralette,” said founder Hodgdon.

Defining the market

It’s difficult to gauge the volume of the petite lingerie market. Statistics are available for the petite clothing market, but Shing maintains that it is misleading to apply those numbers to lingerie. “A 38A is a small cup, but a woman who is a 38 band would not be considered petite [to lingerie manufacturers] because they’re not small-framed,” she explained. “I have customers who are 6 feet tall, but they are double As. Under the definition of petites, they couldn’t possibly be [petite] because petite is 5-foot-4 and under.”

Shing hypothesizes that most lingerie manufacturers don’t offer a 38AA cup because “they assume that if you have a broader back, then you have a bigger bust to go with it, but that’s not always the case, as people are built differently.”

Though numbers are unavailable, the foundations giant Wacoal, which has offered petite sizes for nine years, noted an “increase” in demand for fashion and basics petite-size lingerie. In response to the demand, Wacoal has increased the number of fashion colors available for each style, according to Liz Smith, director of retail services.

Although few manufacturers or retailers were willing to estimate the demand for petite lingerie, Alla Prima’s Duran noted that it was simply a matter of good customer service.

Duran recalls one of the first customers who entered Alla Prima was a size DD. At the time, she didn’t have any bras in that size and scrambled on the phone for weeks to find a DD. “Once the customer walks in the door, you have to ask, ’Why don’t I have those sizes? I just lost that sale.’” She quickly learned to remedy that mistake. “If you’re conscientious, then you’re going to have to learn how to service that customer and how to fit that customer.”