Women’s fashion begins to face facts: Americans getting bigger

AS SOON as Heidi Zak studied the numbers, she knew it was time to sell a bigger bra.

Zak, founder of the online startup Third Love, has spent three years building her line. The company now offers 59 sizes, and it is testing 15 more. But demand especially for larger sizes - is only rising.

Consider, she says: More than 500,000 women remain on the company’s waiting list for bras in sizes like 44G and 46K.

“As soon as you look at the data, it’s clear: It’s a market that’s so underserved,” Zak said.

Zak is among online retailers who are culling customer complaints, preferences and measurements and arriving at the same conclusion: American women, who on average wear about a size 16, need bigger sizes.

Yet plus-size apparel makes up just a sliver of the clothing on the market. Internet start-ups, armed with reams of data and often more nimble than traditional retailers, are filling that gap.

Instead of creating “plus-size collections,” they are more often creating the same dress for every size - say, 0 to 36. They also are bucking long-held industry notions of what larger women should - and shouldn’t - wear, seizing on an opportunity that mainstream retailers have long ignored.

They’re clearly on to something: Sales of plus-size apparel have been on the upswing. They grew six per cent, to US$21.4 billion, last year, outpacing the two per cent growth in the overall women’s clothing market, according to research firm NPD Group.

Stitch Fix, an online styling service, recently began offering up to size 24W across 90 brands. EShakti, which offers customisable clothing in sizes 0 to 36W, has been steadily increasing its range with promising results: Sizes 14 and up account for 52 percent of the company’s sales.

And at online retailer ModCloth, nearly threequarters of clothing is available in every size from XXS to 4X.

“A lot of brands think very narrowly about who their customer is,” said Matthew Kaness, ModCloth’s chief executive. “There’s this belief that plus-size customers simply don’t spend as much - but that is only because of a lack of choice.”

A company survey, he says, found that 80 per cent of plussize women would spend more on clothing if items were offered in their size. His sales indicate that, too: Plus-size shoppers buy 20 percent more frequently than other customers.

“Women and men have been getting heavier, but manufacturers haven’t kept up,” said Marc Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. “Most retailers don’t even go there - or if they do, they’re very inconsistent about their approach.” —WPBloomberg