In North America alone, about 200 million women wear clothes of size 12 or more, but brands are in no hurry to produce large-sized clothes and are struggling to come up with something and raise prices for it.
Brands like Old Navy charge more for larger women's sizes, but not for men's. Others share costs across a range of sizes. Designers were surprised at the commercial success of the large sizes, which currently make up, for example, one fifth of Juan Carlos Obando's sales and one third of Thani Taylor's e-commerce business.
How many girls are big
In the US and Canada alone, approximately 200 million women are larger than the usual sizes of major clothing brands. This number is comparable to the size of the entire EU women's clothing market. While many fashion brands are striving to grow in emerging markets such as China and in new categories such as knitwear or household goods, others, such as Fenty, Universal Standard and Good American, have achieved marketing success by diversifying their size range. . However, many brands have difficulty with design, price and market expansion.
Pricing problem
The fashion industry has long agreed to put the same price on clothes, regardless of their size, in fact, amortizing the higher cost of materials for larger sizes. Given this tradition, it would be strange to pay more for size 10 than for 2. However, the plus-size category was overlooked, so no one came up with a suitable term for sizes from 14 and above, not to mention setting industry standards for production and pricing.
Some manufacturers consider it unfair to distribute the added value of large sizes to all the others that they currently produce. They offer their solution to the problem.
As a result, while fans of New York Lirika Matoshi can buy a Dream Come True dress for $ 350 (22,000 rubles), women of size XL and above will have to pay an additional $ 100 for the same dress. In Old Navy, a large knitted sheath dress costs $ 47.99 (3,000 rubles), but $ 39.99 (2,500 rubles) is a regular size. The argument is that large sizes are more expensive due to the consumption of fabric and additional labor to create and fit the picture.
But such a pricing structure is inconsistent even within individual companies. For example, for men's clothing of large sizes, the price does not increase.
How to get out of a situation
The average woman in the United States wears a size of 16, while most brands have a size range of up to 10 or 12. As a result, they have an acute shortage of data on millions of customers they do not serve. The question of whether it is fair to take more money for the 18th size is still open.
Luxury haute couture brands have no such excuses. Dolce & Gabbana has recently expanded to Italian 55, roughly equivalent to US size 18, with price parity for all sizes. Through its special division, the label got acquainted with the desires of such customers, so the addition of large sizes to the finished clothing line was a natural step.
Los Angeles-based designer Juan Carlos Obando found that while he feared this, making large sizes didn't increase costs. He did not even expect large sizes to sell so well.
Large sizes currently account for about one fifth of total sales and are its fastest growing segment. Moreover, in the manufacture of clothing larger sizes can be used with standard fabrics 140 cm wide.