TAKE A LOOK around. No matter what mainstream fashion magazines say, every woman is not built like wafer-thin model Kate Moss.
This fact isn’t lost on direct marketers, who are taking advantage of the potential available in the plus-size market. Recently Brylane’s Chadwick’s of Boston unit launched the Jessica London catalog for this segment. Brylane, parent company of plus-size catalogers Roaman’s and Lane Bryant, has another new book in the works for the 17- to-24-year-old market. And Hanover Direct Inc.’s Silhouettes is experimenting with targeting the category online and through image-building television spots.
The interest is understandable. The NPD Group, a market research firm in Port Washington, NY, notes the plus-size category has grown some 20% since 1994, to approximately $23 billion in 1997. Other estimates place the market at $26 billion, or about one-fourth of the total sales in fashion. And the plus-size market reportedly has the potential to increase to a 60% share of sales.
The irony, most catalogers feel, is that the segment is no different from the mainstream women’s clothing market.
“There’s nothing different,” says Stephanie Sobel, senior vice president of merchandise at Diplomat Corp., owner of the Brownstone Studio catalog. “It’s the same woman, just a different size. You don’t see a different demographic.”
But there are statistics to consider. As Lane Bryant senior vice president of marketing and new business development Jules Silbert points out, the demographics of plus-size women are somewhat older, and the fastest growing segment of the population overall is 55 years old and above. (There is also, naturally, a younger segment; 22% of the U.S. teenage population is estimated to be overweight.)
Depending on who you ask, plus-sizes can start as small as 12 or as large as 16. Regardless of a woman’s size, the point is she can’t find the item she wants in manufacturers’ “normal” size range.
AGA Catalog and Marketing Design vice president/creative director Jim Brinkley says Brylane’s Roaman’s and Lane Bryant books target essentially the same market, just with a different focus. “Lane Bryant is older, more conservative,” Brinkley says, adding that its sister book attracts newer and younger customers. “Roaman’s is fashion conscious and savvy.”
Silbert feels plus-sizes tend to skew lower economically. (“It just happens to be the demographics of large sizes. It could be heredity or eating habits.”) A typical Brylane customer, he says, buys three items at a time that usually relate, which total on average between $75 and $80. This isn’t surprising, given that the market appears to prefer seeing complete ensembles modeled in the catalog-a design tactic that encourages multiple-item purchases.
“It’s a given: Putting the outfits together with the hat or pin that completes the look does better, sales-wise,” Brinkley said.
Lane Bryant sends out some 50 editions each year, and Roaman’s 45. Jessica London has mailed four issues annually so far.
Acquiring new names is difficult, Silbert says. Prospects from files such as plus-size magazine Radiance draw well, but because of their low counts they don’t have the impact of general interest publications. Lane Bryant has experimented with and will continue to test DRTV spots on such cable channels as Lifetime, the Food Network and the Fox Family Channel. However, conversions from an online catalog site were low. “Our customer is older,” he says, “so she’s not a pioneer user of the Internet.”
Other catalogers have done well aiming at more upscale demographics with higher income brackets and lower age ranges. Diplomat’s Sobel describes the Brownstone Woman customer in such terms.
“Female, in her early forties, with a moderate to high income,” Sobel says, adding she is “urban, more often than not.”
But, “the strength is in 55 and up,” says Jean Paaswell, who founded Brownstone Woman over a decade ago and sold it to Diplomat in 1996. “It’s an affluent section of mail order. There’s more disposable income, and it shows in the average order.”
Paaswell began by offering larger sizes in her catalog, Brownstone Studio, before spinning off Brownstone Woman. Some customers, she notes, go from one catalog to the other as their weight fluctuates. “Usually, she buys two units,” Paaswell says. A typical order runs $165.
Paaswell agrees with Silbert’s assessment that finding new names is challenging because of the small list universe. She favors other plus-size catalog lists like misses clothier Salon Z to magazine lists.
Radiance editor/publisher Alice Ansfield, however, has no aversion to catalogs. The quarterly magazine for plus-size women acquired 102 subscribers from an insert in some 6,000 fulfilled orders from a cataloger.
The catalog Silhouettes is also looking to alternative ways to find customers, including television and the Web. The site (www.silhouettes.com) was set up last year and is promoted in the catalog and space ads, says Hanover Direct’s Stephen S. Marks, president for women’s apparel for Tweeds and Silhouettes.
Since the middle of July, Silhouettes has been testing what Marks describes as part image, part name acquisition ads on cable networks. At press time it was too early to tabulate inquiries and conversions, but Marks was upbeat on the preliminary results. The catalog is also looking to expand its space-ad reach. While placements in plus-size magazine Mode do well, says Marks, Silhouettes is considering mainstream fashion and general interest books as well.
Silhouettes itself was a spinoff of Hanover’s women’s apparel catalogs. Twenty editions of Silhouettes are mailed annually. The catalog’s data card cites a house file of 230,000 last-12-month buyers; the average order (two to three items at a time) is $125; customers’ average age is 42; and typical household income is $50,000. Some modeling of the Silhouettes database has been done, says Marks. Modeling possibilities include looking at related product areas in general and “non-apparel goods” in particular.
“It’s a consumer-sensitive business,” he claims, adding that Silhouettes tries to build a “one-to-one relationship” with customers.
(It should be noted, however, that the business and its clientele have a sense of humor. Paaswell says that before she launched Brownstone Woman she received a letter from a potential customer. The woman, who wore a plus-size, wrote: “Remember, the larger the woman, the larger the pocketbook.”)
Marks points out that Silhouettes targets specific segments with specific offers; for example, sending dress buyers catalogs with a higher percentage of dress offerings. Inbound callers might also receive special offers depending on what their records reveal when they phone in an order.
But the plus-size market has a downside. Big Beautiful Woman magazine recently ceased publication. And both Appleseed and Spiegel closed their plus-size catalogs (but added plus-sizes to their regular books).
Spiegel still provides a plus-size select from its list-since, as it surely realizes, there’s a strong market for these names. And list broker/manager Mokrynski & Associates Inc. cites the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as a non-size-specific renter of plus-size lists.