Are US apparel retailers biased towards "larger" consumers?
A lot of shopping in my household is done post Christmas. Walk into any retail store and you see signs of "Clearance", "Sale" for all the merchandise left over from Christmas.
The size's available though are always in the L, XL, XXL category. Hardly any S; may be a few M's. I am sure this is especially frustrating for someone whose entire family falls into the Petite or Small/ Medium size range.
As for the "larger" consumers, I am sure you are happy with the deals you are getting!!
Most retailers decide their size distribution based on pre-defined percentages. A typical order to their vendors would go "Give me 100 units of that shirt; broken down into Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large using a distribution of 20%, 40%, 30%, 20%.
Depending on the retailer, this size distribution could be applied for the entire chain; for a set of stores; for some products, all products. The size distribution is typically derived based on past history.
Now for the typical problems in this approach:
- The history is taken based on sales. However not all sales are equal. Full-price sales is more representative than including clearance sales. Taking clearance sales just repeats history!!
- Given the demographic diversity in the US; it is no longer sufficient to take a generic size distribution across all stores. California will sell more "smalls"; and Texas more "XL's"
- A number of retailers order by pre-pack. In some cases the pre-packs are so generic that it completely overrules the size distribution used
There seems to be money on the table for retailers who invest in building "size optimization" capabilities; that can take into account regional differences and can accurately forecast size distributions.
