How To Sell XXXL

  • ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY JOHN CORBITT

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    Steelcase, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., makes a 500-lb.-capacity office chair, Criterion Plus, that is 5 in. wider than the 18-in. standard and sells for $1,500. Countless hours of watching people at work and noticing how much larger they had become, says product manager Ken Tameling, convinced Steelcase engineers that the seat of their ergonomic Leap chair should be set at 20 in. They engineered its backrest to produce greater resistance when heavy people lean back, as well as attached arms that move laterally. All this, says Tameling, has helped make sales of the $1,299 chair the fastest-growing of any chair Steelcase has ever sold.

    CLOTHING Lane Bryant has targeted full-figured women for more than a century, but its new owner, Charming Shoppes, a plus-size retailer, opened 60 outlets last year, for a total of 696. Today 70% of the parent firm's $2.5 billion in revenues flow from the purses of the rubenesque. "Our customer is the average woman," says Dorrit Bern, Charming Shoppes CEO, "not the minority."

    Half of all U.S. women today wear size 14 or larger; in 1985 the average size was 8. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see the opportunity here," says Ceslie Armstrong, editor in chief of Grace Woman, a lifestyle magazine for the full-figured. Marshal Cohen, an analyst at NPD Fashionworld, a market-information service in Port Washington, N.Y., estimates that the retail market for plus-size apparel is worth $17 billion and accounts for 20% of the total women's clothing sales. It's one of the industry's fastest-growing segments, up 11% in 2001. (During sluggish 2002, when clothing sales dropped 4.3% overall, plus-size sales were down only 1%.) "Retailers that take this segment of the market and bring it front and center," says Cohen, "are the ones who will succeed."

    In 1999 J.C. Penney started a separate special-sizes division that caters to full-figured women. Kmart has expanded the floor space devoted to plus-size clothes 25% and added a junior-plus-size department in 400 stores. Over the past three years, the retailer's plus-size sales have grown more than 15% and make up about 30% of its women's clothing sales. "Customers have been demanding it," says Nick Just, a general merchandise manager. "Why should plus-size clothes be dumpy?"

    That's precisely what designers like Tommy Hilfiger, Liz Claiborne and Carmen Marc Valvo have been asking themselves. "Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes," observes Valvo, who made a name for himself designing evening gowns for such slinky stars as Kim Cattrall and Halle Berry. "The conventional wisdom was to cover big women up. I asked, 'Why can't she wear a sexy, low-cut neckline?'" So he carefully cut his patterns to flatter large women and provided balance to minimize the waistline — or create one if it was lacking. The effort, he says, has flattered his bottom line, contributing an estimated 10% to company sales.

    The plus-size movement has gathered sufficient momentum to inspire a full-figured doll, a replica of size-14 fashion model Emme; about 12,000 have been sold since October. Still, some advertisers have a tough time adapting to the subtleties of promoting their products to any but the most svelte of women. Editor Armstrong says she returned submissions from a couple of advertisers who used thin, young models to display their wares. Grace Woman, she explained to them, is aimed at a more realistic (and moneyed) audience: primarily women in their mid-30s who wear size 12 to 14 and up. The young model promoting cosmetics wouldn't connect with them. The advertisers have since customized the material they submit to the magazine. And Grace's investors have decided to capitalize on their understanding of the plus-size market and move up the date of the launch of a boutique creative agency the company had intended to open in the fall.

    MEDICAL EQUIPMENT Few are benefiting as directly from the increase in obesity as equipment manufacturers that cater to the bariatrics market — a branch of medicine that treats the severely obese. Michael Dionne, a physical therapist in Gainesville, GA., who specializes in bariatrics, says more and more hospitals call on him for help in reducing injuries to nurses and orderlies who must move an increasing number of greatly overweight patients. One Detroit hospital attributed 23 back injuries in two months to moving the obese.

    Medical-equipment manufacturers such as Hill-Rom of Batesville, Ind., and Kinetic Concepts of San Antonio, Texas, rent and sell everything from heavy-duty commodes and wheelchairs to mechanized beds that can hold 500 lbs. to 1,000 lbs., help turn patients and feature air-circulation mattress systems to help prevent bedsores. The market for bed surfaces and accessories alone is estimated to be $150 million a year and is growing 15% annually. "As the obesity epidemic grows, so does our revenue," says Lynne Sly, vice president of marketing at Kinetic Concepts. Rental rates are steep — up to $200 a day for a bed — but worth it. Before such products were available and widely covered by Medicare and private insurance, recalls Joe Sacco of Central Medical Supplies in Long Valley, N.J., "we'd see patients sleeping on top of plywood propped up on cinder blocks." CMS's sales of heavy-duty beds have doubled in the past year.

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