After reading about clothing retailer Forever21.com upcoming launch of plus sizes on there website in May and in some of there other stores but NOT there flagship store it made me wonder what in the world is it going to take for the mainstream retailers to realize there are bigger women out there and that providing them with trendy fashionable clothing can help their companies bottom line.
As a business man I understand test marketing and soft product launching, but when it comes to larger sizes we have seen reports for years about what the average dress size of women and in some cases men is yet companies are still “testing” to see if they can sell to fat folks.
Years ago it was estimated that the clothing for women over a size 14 would account for $12 billion in annual sales by 2010. At the time the sales figures were around $5 billion. What part of numbers like those do the buyers for forever21 not understand?
Macy’s introduced larger sizes for women years ago even to the point that they reduced the amount of pettite floor space in their stores to accomodate the plus size fashions. Top designers are including larger models to met the demand for clothes for larger sizes yet we still have stores that are testing the water to see if plus size clothing is a match for a company that sell clothes.
If companies like forever21.com would just read blogs like this one and others and see the amount of frustration that is a part of the daily shopping experience of larger men and women they would be running to try and get our shopping dollars. I guess the success of companies like Rosaleewomensize Apparel, IGIGI, Monif C, and others is not big enough to show that there is a huge market available for plus sizes. Forever21 there really is no need to test the waters when there are already plenty of boats in the water waiting for a port to welcome them ashore.
What do you think about stores that soft launch to plus sizes or sell plus sizes only in select markets?
