Retailers expand offerings of plus-size fashions

Among children ages 6 to 11, about 30 percent are overweight or obese, up fourfold from 25 years ago. Nearly a third of those ages 12 to 19 are heavy, with the percentage more than doubling during the same period, the nonprofit advocacy group said.

That’s why “virtually everybody” is looking to cater to the plus-size market, said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard’s Retail Consulting Group in Nutley, N.J. “That’s where the dollars are.”

But it took decades for many retailers to see the light.

“The stores did not want the plus-size woman to mix with the svelte and slender,” Barnard said. “Bad for the image, they felt.”

Maxine Monroe, the 37-year-old publisher of an upcoming booklet called “Curvaceous Fashion Guide for the Plus Size Woman,” said retailers have taken this market for granted for a long time. At least in the past, larger-size sections tended to be tucked away in less-visited parts of stores.

“It’s horrible, just horrible,” said the size-24 Philadelphia resident. It’s as if retailers were telling her, “I’ll sell it to you, but I don’t want to see you at my store," she said.

Size snobbism, however, is shrinking as retailers realize that outfitting the Rubenesque shopper is a growth niche in the mature women’s apparel market, said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at The NPD Group, a consumer research firm in Port Washington, N.Y.

From March 2005 to February 2006, sales of plus-size women’s apparel rose by nearly 7 percent to $19 billion, according to the research company. That compares with a 3.4 percent increase in sales of women’s clothing as a whole to over $101 billion.

Plus sizes are more profitable for retailers. On average, plus-size customers pay 8 percent to 10 percent more for clothes because they go on sale less often, Cohen said.

But as plus sizes become more mainstream, prices should drop, Barnard said.

That would be welcome news to 42-year-old Vanessa White, a New Castle, Del., resident who drove to Philadelphia recently with her family to shop for plus sizes at an Old Navy.

She said she pays more for her clothes, but thinks retailers should change their tune.

“The average is not average anymore,” White said. “The average is plus size.”

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