Fashion Facts

60% of Junonia Sales are Internet-based

"...by 1999, Kelly was convinced the time was ready for a fully functioning web site where customers could view the full offering and order clothing and pay online. Now six years later, 60% of the company`s $10-million-plus in sales come via the Internet, according to Tom Lindmeier, director of e-commerce. He notes that much of those sales are the result of catalog customers who order online rather than calling a service center. Still, he estimates between 15% and 25% of total sales are from customers who are new to Junonia, never having received a catalog but coming to the site via web links or search.

And the Internet business is growing. Lindmeier estimates that last year close to 50% of sales came via the web, up from about 35% two years ago. He`s not willing to predict how high the Internet percentage will go, but he expects additional growth. "There are no signs the growth in Internet sales will stop," Lindmeier says."

Still, there are special challenges to selling clothing to the plus-size market via the Internet. While the web affords such customers privacy in that they don`t have to shop in a plus-size store at the local mall, there are size and fit considerations. Fit is an especially important consideration to such shoppers and the inability to try on for size before purchasing is a special challenge for online retailers pursuing the plus-size market.

One way Junonia gets around this obstacle is that it designs and manufactures its own line of apparel. Then, once a regular customer figures out what her size is in the Junonia line, she can be confident that other apparel in that size will fit the same. This sets Junonia apart in the plus-size apparel business as most of the competitors sell multiple designer and manufacturer labels. In such situations, a size 18 in one line may not fit the same as a size 18 in another line.

"Fit is always an issue for women, but it`s even more of an issue for larger women," Kelly says. "We`ve noticed that with many of our customers, on their first order, they`ll buy the same item in several sizes and then return the ones that don`t fit. Once they get to know our system, they will just order in one size."

Quote from "How plus-size Junonia.com goes after a petite market niche", by Lauri Giesen

Plus Size Sales Are Growing Faster than Straight Size

"Despite our weight- (or waif-) obsessed society, half of American women wear clothing in sizes 14 and larger. In 2000, women spent more than $17 billion on clothing sizes 16 and up, a 22 percent jump over the previous year according to the New York-based NPD Group, a marketing-research firm."

"Oh, it's outrageous," said NPD spokeswoman Keisha Fulton about the unprecedented growth in women's larger-size sales. She couldn't account for the drastic increase, citing NPD figures that show plus-size fashion has grown 4 percent to 6 percent every year for at least the past four while growth in the rest of the apparel industry has hovered around 2 percent to 4 percent.
(Source: Sara Jean Green, The Seattle Times, April 21, 2001)

"Some 65 million American women -- 40 percent of the female population -- wear a size 12 or bigger, says Dan Hess, CEO of onlyreal.com, a site that caters to plus-size women. Yet only 26 percent of all women's clothing sales are in the plus-size category. Why the discrepancy? Hess says too few retailers want to get into the plus-size business, often for image reasons."
(Source: The Salon website)

Land's End introduced extended sizes in its catalog five years ago, because customers begged for it. "It was our No. 1 sizing request," says Pam Saving, senior fit specialist at Land's End. "We were receiving over 200 requests a month from our customers, asking 'Why don't you offer this size range?'" The response blew away the mail-order merchandiser, which began with 40 styles, then doubled its line to 80 styles the next season, and then to 120. Now, its line includes more than 200 styles.
http://www.syracuse.com/living/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1031\ 21509073553.xml

The Sizing Systems

"Studies conducted by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and separately by Kurt Salmon Associates (a leading textile/apparel consultancy), indicate that over 50% of the consumer population is not satisfied with the fit of off-the-rack clothes. Sizing systems in place at most major apparel companies date back to the 1950's, 60's, and 70's for lack of better information. Companies use sales data to get feedback on what sizes are selling and in what proportions - but sales data never capture lost sales."

" Historically, almost all U.S. sizing surveys conducted were for the U.S.A. military for the purpose of sizing equipment and military apparel."

http://www.sizeusa.com/background.html

Designers

"Liz Claiborne was the first designer to lend her name to a full-figure line, launching Elisabeth in the late 1980s." (Source: Mode Magazine)

"There's not a single designer creating couture fashion - the priciest of designer clothing - in size 14 and up." (Source: Mode Magazine)

"Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld has reportedly said curvier women need to lose weight to fit into his clothes. According to the online edition of Vogue, the designer said that women who are curvier than the average catwalk mannequin should lose weight to fit into his microscopic skirts, crop tops and hot pants."
Story filed: 13:48 Friday 11th October 2002 http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_688335.html?menu=news.lifestyle

"(Top plus size model and designer)Emme said full-figured women are also sick of being hidden away in far-flung corners or department-store basements. The location of plus-size departments makes it impossible for differently sized girlfriends to shop together and women on the cusp - those, who say, wear a missy size 12 blouse and a size 16 skirt or vice versa - have to go up and down escalators to put an outfit together." (Source: Mode Magazine)

The Importance of Using Plus Sized Models in Your Marketing

"While even other plus-size stores often use models who are more average size or on the very low end of the plus-size clothing sizes, Junonia requires its models, both those in the catalog and on the Internet, be at least a size 18. Junonia`s clothing line starts at a size 14. In the general fashion industry, models typically are a size 6 or smaller.

By using the larger women as models, Junonia wants customers to get a good idea of how the clothing will actually look on a larger woman. "We get more letters on that topic than any other," Kelly says. "Our customers write us and say `you depict me the way that I am.`"

Quote from "How plus-size Junonia.com goes after a petite market niche", by Lauri Giesen

I cannot stress to retailers how important this is. If you use a size 8-12 model as your standard plus size model, you are disrespecting your customer. You don't believe in her beauty, nor are you likely to understand the fit needs of her clothing or style choices. Trust me on that, it is the biggest complaint that I hear from the thousands of plus sized women that I've communicated with in the past five years.

So You Say That Young Women Aren't Plus Sized? Here's the Fashion Facts!

"While young women have been gradually growing larger, their choices for fashionable apparel have not kept pace. Data gathered by the Cotton Incorporated Lifestyle MonitorTM shows that 27% of its female respondents in the 16-24 age group wear sizes 12 and up.

A whopping 56% of these plus-size females could not find clothes they liked in their size, compared to 35% of young women in the same age group wearing size 11 and under. Furthermore, over two-thirds of the plus-size respondents claim that current styles don�t flatter their shape, against 41% of the smaller sized group. And these findings are echoed strongly by members of the industry." (Source: www.cottoninc.com)

�It is most important for teenagers to fit in � they don�t want to be set apart, or be forced to go to a special store or section within a store to find clothes they like that fit well. Instead of creating separate lines for larger sizes, manufacturers should expand and size up existing lines.�
- Cara Kagan, editor of Girl magazine (USA)

Diet Articles Obviously Not Working

``Diet articles don't do any good,'' Kelly says. ``But they do harm. Some people say to me there's a huge obesity problem in this country and you have to teach girls how to eat. Well, every fashion magazine has articles on dieting, and if there's a huge obesity problem they're obviously not working.''
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/kids/chi-020711girlmag,0,98850.story=

"Advertisements emphasize thinness as a standard for female beauty, and the bodies idealized in the media are frequently atypical of normal, healthy women. In fact, today's fashion models weigh 23% less than the average female, and a young woman between the ages of 18-34 has a 7% chance of being as slim as a catwalk model and a 1% chance of being as thin as a supermodel. However, 69% of girls in one study said that magazine models influence their idea of the perfect body shape, and the pervasive acceptance of this unrealistic body type creates an impractical standard for the majority of women."

Majority of American Women Are a Size 14, Yet Manufacturers Continue to Cater to the Size 6 Prototype Says Recent Survey

NEW YORK, Sept. 9, 2001 -- Major fashion houses that include Tommy Hilfiger and Liz Claiborne have launched Plus Size lines to cater to the larger women. But the market needs more plus-size apparel, according to the latest survey from MarketResearch.com. According to Meg Hargreaves, VP of Research Publishing for MarketResearch.com, the plus-size clothing industry is experiencing a long overdue period of extraordinary growth.

"The women's plus-size apparel market comprises a considerable share of the overall U.S. women's apparel market," Ms. Hargreaves stated. "Nearly 30% of all women's apparel sales in 2000 were of plus-size items, and supply is still not on track to keep up with demand in coming years."

Great news for Tommy Hilfiger and Elisabeth by Liz Claiborne! But not so great for clothing manufacturers who continue to ignore the lucrative plus-size market.

Total retail sales for plus-size items in the year 2000 reached almost $32 billion, or 30% of the women's clothing market, and major fashion houses have jumped to find attractive, fashion conscious options for the larger woman.

The industry has a financially secure audience that has proven to be very brand loyal, as well as sales records that soar compared to other market segments. Exemplifying the current extraordinary market conditions for large-size clothing is the recent purchase by Charming Shoppes Inc. of plus-size powerhouse Lane Bryant from Limited Inc. last month for $335 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The report from Package Facts entitled "The U.S. Market for Plus Size Apparel" provides detail information about consumer demographics, as well as distribution and marketing trends about development, and emerging retail campaigns. The report also includes historical sales data, as well as market projections through the year 2005. The report is available through Marketresearch.com

Last updated 5 September 2005.