CONFESSIONS OF A FAT GIRL

Grading the Calorie-Counting Web Sites

I was cleaning out my inbox and found this article a friend sent me some time ago. I think it's pretty interesting, though a little out dated now. Posted it anyway. And I pasted some of the comments on it that were particularly interesting to me.  -A

April 30, 2008,  4:29 pm

Grading the Calorie-Counting Web Sites

By Jennifer 8. Lee

The decision by a federal appeals court on Tuesday night has put the city rules requiring calorie posting in New York City establishments into effect — at least temporarily, pending the ultimate outcome of the lawsuit. The city will be able to issue violations without fines starting now, though it probably won’t immediately do so. (The fines, if the city wins, wouldn’t start until a new deadline of July 18.)

In a statement, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner, said, “McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and the other big chains that haven’t yet listed calories as required by the Health Code have run out of stalling tactics. Some chains have worked hard to deny customers information they need to make healthy food choices — but this decision starts to clear the way for people to have ready access to calorie information when they order their food.”

Chuck Hunt, a spokesman for the New York State Restaurant Association, said, “I’m disappointed.”

He said that printing and posting calorie counts “is not something that can be done overnight.” He said the ruling means that restaurants “will have to do things they wouldn’t necessarily have had to do if there had been a stay” — or if the association ultimately won the appeal.

Some companies — including Quiznos, Subway, Starbucks, Jamba Juice and Chipotle — have already started voluntarily posting their caloric information in their stores. Others — McDonalds, Burger King and KFCs — will be forced to by this ruling. Meanwhile, the federal court case will hear the larger appeal with a court date to be set the week of June 9.

In theory, the calorie listings are supposed to be listed with the same prominence as prices. City Room was curious, if not for this regulation, how forthcoming were companies with their nutritional information?

To compare an area where there are not given standards to post nutritional information, City Room did a brief survey of the company Web sites. We found found 1) horrifying calorie numbers for items (750 calories for a venti strawberries & crème frappuccino blended crème from Starbucks, 1310 calories for a large prime rib ranchero with cheese and dressing); and 2) that some of the companies that have been most resistant about the posting have the most easily accessible nutritional information: McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC.

The companies that had voluntarily posted their information in their stores made were a more mixed bag. With the exception of Subway and Starbucks, there was style over substance in some Web sites: too much flash, too many dancing food items. It’s actually easier, in many cases, to go to third-party sites to find out how many calories things were.

Here is a City Room assessment of the ease of nutritional info on their Web sites:

Voluntary Caloric Posters

Chipotle: We knew, because of fleeting references on the Internet, that there existed a nutrition sheet for Chipotle. Tracking it down, however, on its Web site was difficult. Googling “chipotle” and “nutrition” and “calories” or any other number of combinations, brought up third-party sites (including Chipotlefan has a nice nutrition calculator). The phantom nutrition sheet was not seen under “menu” or “ingredients.” Finally, an e-mail message from a representative pointed us to an FAQ, where one could find the pdf document. Right. That’s where we thought it would be. B-

Quiznos: Consumers have complained about finding the Quiznos nutritional information. New management has come in and redesigned the Web site. But the nutritional information is a headache to get to and it is available only in a Flash Player. You have to go to the menu, then click on “More Nutritional Information,” which gives you a little button under each individual sandwich. Each one of those generates a pop-up calculator, which is very cute but tedious if you want to compare across sandwiches. “Since we were late to the game as a big chain, we went with what is standard practice,” said Steve Provost, the chief marketing officer. “I think there are really cool applications out there, but the coolest ones are the ones that let you replicate the behavior on the restaurant: ‘Add the drink, nah, I’ll have a water instead. Hold the cheese.’” The sandwiches under 500 calories are listed prominently, which bumps it up to a C+.

Jamba Juice: Fancy graphics, lots of flash and dancing blueberries, but the nutritional information is buried under each item on a “click here for nutritional info,” which creates a tastefully designed pop-up window. No way to compare across drinks. Better to go to The Daily Plate, which has a side-by-side shorthand comparison. B-

Starbucks: The Starbucks Web site has a whole page on nutrition, easily accessible on the Web site and through Google. The page has a bunch of dropdown menus, which lets you configure a drink and also links that allows people to compare across items in a category. While it has a downloadable list for low-calorie drinks under 200 calories [pdf], it is hard to find a composite list across everything. A-

Subway: Multiple pages of information by type, easily accessible on the Web site, and downloadable, printable versions [pdf] — part of the whole Subway ethos of more nutritional information in the hands of customers. “We’ve been providing nutritional information for quite a while for over 10 years, before it was fashionable,” said Kevin Kane, a company spokesman. A

Involuntary Caloric Posters

McDonald’s: For all its opposition to the calorie posting rule, McDonald’s nutritional info is very easy to access. It appears all on one page, and includes a downloadable printable version [pdf] on its Web site. A

Burger King: The site has lots of downloadable lists about nutritional information in the nutrition section, including a multipage master list [pdf]. But as far as we can observe, it only appears in document form, and not on the Web site itself. B to B+

KFC: A nifty (though cumbersome) calculator is easily accessible and will let you calculate your total caloric intake per meal. It also offers a downloadable printable version [pdf]. A-

COMMENTS

The problem isn’t fast food chains putting up information on calorie content in the food.

It’s fat people not knowing when to put the Double Whopper down.

I see that packet of Reese’s Pieces in your back pocket too! Put it down gordito and go get yourself some celery sticks!!!

— Posted by Jason F.

A good one-stop resource for restaurant calorie counts is Dottie’s Weight Loss Zone (dwlz.com.) Scroll down the first page until you find Restaurants; she has hundreds of restaurant menus listed, with calorie, fiber, and fat counts. (The first bold number is the Weight Watchers Point count.) She’s always updating, and includes even smaller chains.

Matt, no you don’t need it to know that the big burger is bad for you, but you may need it to know that the chicken breast sandwich is worse. Some of these things aren’t intuitive.

— Posted by Beryl

For these calorie counts to be of any value, they must be related to the individual consumer, their activity level, and taken in context. The average adult, male or female, neither sedentary or overly active, requires about 15 calories per pound, per day to maintain their current weight. Obviously, a smaller female must maintain at a lower calorie count, compared to a larger male. Multiply your weight by 15, and you will have a daily calorie count to shoot for, and then adjust for individual circumstances.

— Posted by charles Judson

Do you really need a calorie chart to tell you that the triple whopper or the 1/2 pound angus bacon burger with extra chese and large fries is not good for you?

Only in the People Republic of New York.

— Posted by Matt

Nine million Australians are a ticking 'fat bomb'

Nine million Australians are a ticking 'fat bomb'

• Jill Stark
• June 20, 2008

AUSTRALIA has become the fattest nation in the world, with more than 9 million adults now rated as obese or overweight, according to an alarming new report.

The most definitive picture of the national obesity crisis to date has found that Australians now outweigh Americans and face a future "fat bomb" that could cause 123,000 premature deaths over the next two decades.

If the crisis is not averted, obesity experts have warned, health costs could top $6 billion and an extra 700,000 people will be admitted to hospital for heart attacks, strokes and blood clots caused by excess weight.

The latest figures show 4 million Australians — or 26% of the adult population — are now obese compared to an estimated 25% of Americans. A further 5 million Australians are considered overweight.

The report, Australia's Future 'Fat Bomb', from Melbourne's Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, will be presented at the Federal Government's inquiry into obesity, which comes to Melbourne today.

A grim picture is painted of expanding waistlines fuelled by a boom in fast food and a decline in physical activity, turning us into a nation of sedentary couch potatoes.

Those most at risk of premature death are the middle-aged, with 70% of men and 60% of women aged 45 to 64 now classed as obese.

But some weight specialists have questioned the tool used to measure obesity, saying "entire rugby teams" would be classified as obese if their body mass index (BMI) was calculated.

BMI is measured by dividing weight in kilograms by height in metres squared. A BMI of over 25 is considered overweight while more than 30 is obese.

But the tool does not distinguish between muscle and fat, prompting calls for the BMI overweight limit to be raised to 28.

However, even leading nutritionist Jenny O'Dea from the University of Sydney — who recently claimed Australia's childhood obesity epidemic had been exaggerated — has backed the new figures, which suggest that the crisis for adults has been drastically underestimated.

Professor O'Dea said that while being fat was not necessarily a health risk for everyone, there was no doubt obesity was taking its toll on the nation.

It was previously thought that around 3 million adults were obese. But many past surveys were seen as unreliable as they often required participants to guess their own weight.

The latest data was based on more than 14,000 people at 100 rural and metropolitan sites in every Australian state and territory. Each had their BMI recorded by having their weight, height and waist measured as part of a national blood pressure screening day last year.

The report's lead author, Simon Stewart, said that even allowing for the BMI's potential failings, the best case scenario was that 3.6 million adults were battling obesity.

"We could fill the MCG 40 times over with the number of obese Australians now, then you can double that if you look at the people who are also overweight — those are amazing figures," Professor Stewart said.

"And in terms of a public health crisis, there is nothing to rival this. If we ran a fat Olympics we'd be gold medal winners as the fattest people on earth at the moment," he said.

"We've heard of AIDS orphans in Africa, we're looking at this time bomb going off where parents have to think about this carefully," Professor Steward said.

"They're having children at an older age, if you're obese and you have a child do you really want to miss out on their wedding?

"Do you want to miss out on the key events in their life? Yes you will if you don't do something about your weight now."

The obesity inquiry in Melbourne will be told that a national strategy encouraging overweight Australians to lose five kilograms in five months could reduce heart-related hospital admissions by 27% and cut deaths by 34% over the next 20 years.

Among the radical solutions proposed in the report is a plan to make fat towns compete for "healthy" status in national weight loss contests tied to Federal Government funding.

Towns that lost the most weight would be given cash to build sports centres and swimming pools.

And like the "Tidy Towns" program, communities would have to meet targets to be eligible for a share of the funding pool.

Other suggestions from Professor Stewart's report include subsidised gym memberships, personal training sessions for heavier people and restricting weight loss surgery to those who show they can lose some weight on their own first.

One of Australia's leading obesity experts, Boyd Swinburn, will tell the inquiry in his own submission that a crackdown on junk food marketing to children is paramount in the fight against the epidemic.

With the fastest growing rate of childhood obesity in the world, Australia must make radical changes to the way unhealthy food is promoted if the rate is to be reduced, his submission reads.

Professor Swinburn, director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University, will argue that better nutritional labelling and more funding for effective treatments such as weight-loss surgery are also necessary.

"We've got a huge problem here and we can't bury our head in the sand any more," Professor Swinburn will tell the inquiry.

"The previous federal government blamed parents and individuals and told them to pull up their socks … that's not going to achieve anything but make us fatter as a nation.

"It's good to see the Rudd Government take obesity seriously with this parliamentary inquiry and the preventative health strategy but that has to be turned into proper policy, regulation and funding."

Ian Caterson, director of the Institute of Obesity, Nutrition and Exercise at the University of Sydney, said innovative government "thinking outside the square" policies were necessary because, "as we get fatter and older as a nation things are just going to get worse."

EXPANDING WAISTLINES

About 4 million adult Australians are obese.

The "fat bomb" is ticking loudly, with 72% of middle-aged males and 58% of middle-aged females overweight or obese.

About 1.5 million middle-aged Australians are obese and therefore at high risk of a heart attack or stroke in the longer term.

Based on the best available evidence, our expanded middle-aged waistlines will result in an extra 700,000 cardiovascular-related hospital admissions in the next 20 years.

These highly preventable admissions will cost Australia, conservatively, an extra $3 billion in health expenditure and $6 billion overall.

An estimated 122,500 men and women will die, many prematurely, from heart problems related to their excess weight in the next 20 years.

A simple strategy such as losing 5kg in five months could reduce heart-related hospital admissions by 27% and deaths by 34% over the next 20 years.{source}

Look Ma, I'm Famous!

A little while back, yours truly did an interview for online magazine, Tango.

The article, entitled "Sex and the Curvy Girl" can be found here: http://www.tangomag.com/20085282/sex-the-curvy-girl.html.

I wish it mentioned the blog and referred to me as a blogger on the subject, but I suppose my graduate student status lends me some cred...? But enjoy. It's an interesting read regardless.

Bitch

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ruth_fowler/2008/04/flab_isnt_fab.html

I won't dignify it with a copy & paste but I will say Fuck you, 'fattist' girl.

Yeah, I'm pissed. So there.

Thanks to Jamie for sharing. I enjoy a good anger-fest like you would not believe.

Size 16... and HOTT

From the UK's Daily Mirror

Yes you can be size 16 and sexy ..says Miss England hopeful Chloe Marshall

5/03/2008

Chloe Marshall (Pic:DM)

You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief as readers turned to our exclusive story about Chloe Marshall this week.

Here, at last, was a positive role model in the shape of a potential Miss England.

A 17-year-old, size-16 trainee beautician from Guildford, Surrey, who proves you can be beautiful without being slimmed down by an artist's airbrush.

We asked the 5ft 10in teenager, who is 12st 8lbs, to model high-street outfits and tell us why being bigger than the average celeb is sexy.

'As a child I was plagued by tonsillitis and hardly ate enough to keep a bird alive. So when I had my tonsils out at 10, I regained my appetite and started to put on weight.

I didn't give my figure a second thought until my first day of secondary school, when I realised I was bigger than many other children.

Someone called me "fat". I was stunned by the nastiness of it. Children can be cruel so for a while the nicknames followed me. I got called "Fatty" and it hurt.

Mum told me: "You're beautiful whatever size you are and never feel ashamed." But by 13 I was already a C cup. Flat-chested girls were jealous. Being curvy gave me kudos and from then on I embraced it. Now I want to be an ambassador for teenagers who are plus sizes.

I want to dispel the myth that being bigger means you're unhealthy. It worries me how many teenage girls have body issues and even develop anorexia.

Some people gain weight because of a bad diet or lack of exercise but there are lots of people like me who exercise regularly and eat well but are just naturally bigger.

Everyone is different. So it upsets me that curvy role models like Charlotte Church and singer Adele are few and far between.

There's a lot of pressure to be skinny and I want teenagers to be happy with the way they are.

It is a myth that men only like skinny girls. I get plenty of attention from guys, although for now the boyfriends can wait as I want to concentrate on finishing college first.

I hope I get through to the finals for Miss England, as I'm showing a different side to beauty. I'm not just another stereotypical skinny blonde.

People ask how I will cope among so many tiny girls and whether I will feel out of place, but it won't bother me. I know big can be beautiful.

I'm happy the way I am. If Miss England was a plus size it would really break the mould.'

'Women who are too thin look old'

Shapely singer Mica Paris, of TV's What Not To Wear, recently wrote a book called Beautiful Within: Finding Happiness And Confidence In Your Own Skin. She says:

'Chloe is a great role model and I'm so thrilled she is standing up for plus size girls. For the past decade women have been going through hell. As a nation we're too obsessed with size. For the majority of women it's totally unrealistic to be a size zero, as women get older they naturally fill out.

Cur ves are gorgeous and great women of the past embraced them - look at Marilyn Monroe, who was a size 14! Personally, I think women who have forced themselves to be too thin look old. You should embrace your natural shape.

My stats are not that far off Chloe's and I'm really happy with my curves. I look great! You've got to relax and not worry about weight. When you see stars who obsessively stick to size zero they just look edgy and moody.

Whereas the stars who eat what they want to eat and don't obsess about food look relaxed and great. It's time for real women to fight back!

An Oldie but Goodie

Might be an interesting read for some. Thanks to Melissa for the link.

NEW YORK TIMES

November 24, 1998

Courting Women Big and Small

By ANNE-MARIE SCHIRO

The name Max Mara doesn't resonate with American women the way Giorgio Armani's does, but the Max Mara company outsells Armani around the world. At last count, it was $906 million to $846 million annually. Why? Because the clothes offer timely fashion in luxury fabrics at less than astronomical prices.

Still less known is Marina Rinaldi, Max Mara's plus-size division, but by bringing youthful styling to a category that was once dowdy and matronly, it has gone far to change the way women who wear large sizes dress.

Max Mara offers Italian-made clothing in silk, cashmere, alpaca, leather and other fine fabrics, the same caliber of materials found in designer clothing but at lower prices. If a woman wants a cashmere blazer, say, she can find one with a Max Mara label for less than $1,000, as opposed to at least $2,000 for one with a designer name attached to it. While the company is known for its classics, it also hops on trends like the leather skirts and jackets and the mirror appliques in its spring 1999 collection.

Marina Rinaldi also uses cashmere, silk and leather, generally in sophisticated colors like gray, camel and black, in clothes with simple slenderizing lines. Some of its new customers remember when large-size clothing meant pastel polyester pants suits and tentlike dresses with flounces. Marina Rinaldi was in the vanguard of companies that brought fashion to the category.

''Max Mara is not cutting edge, but classic fashionable clothing in beautiful fabrics,'' said Lynne Ronan, a senior vice president and general merchandise manager of Saks Fifth Avenue, which has an in-store Max Mara boutique and sells the Marina Rinaldi collection in its plus-size department, Salon Z. Marina Rinaldi's prices range from $250 for a skirt to $5,000 for a mink-trimmed coat. Sizes are 10 to 22.

''The plus-size customer wants to look exactly like everybody else,'' Ms. Ronan said. ''We work with a lot of manufacturers to put more fashion into the clothes. Marina Rinaldi is an important resource for us. It's a high-quality product, beautifully made, and it has the right fit.''

For many years, fit was a prime concern in the plus-size category, one that the Max Mara company recognized early on. ''We started making large sizes in 1979,'' Luigi Maramotti, the co-managing director of Max Mara, said on a recent trip to New York. ''What we did was what everybody else was doing: stretch from regular sizes. But that is totally wrong.''

Sizing patterns upward in the usual way results in overly broad shoulders and long sleeves, low waistlines and baggy crotches in pants. But women who wear size 16 or 18 aren't necessarily taller than a size 8. Mode, the magazine for plus-size women, estimates that 62 percent of American women wear size 12 or larger. (Not all those women can afford Marina Rinaldi or comparable prices and still have a hard time finding fashionable clothes.)

So Max Mara set up an independent company devoted to perfecting pattern-making and called it Marina Rinaldi, after Mr. Maramotti's great-great-grandmother, who owned a dress shop. There are now 170 Marina Rinaldi company-owned boutiques in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, as well as in-store boutiques in Bloomingdale's, Saks and Bergdorf Goodman. The label represents about 20 percent of Max Mara's business.

Max Mara has ambitious plans to make both the Max Mara and Marina Rinaldi lines important players in the United States, as they already are in many countries around the world with 700 company-owned stores.

The big push started in 1994, with the opening of a Max Mara boutique on 68th Street and Madison Avenue. That was followed by 14 more stores around the country, by the doubling in size this fall of the Manhattan store, the opening of a Marina Rinaldi store on Madison Avenue last month and the arrival this month of Max Mara and Marina Rinaldi boutiques on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. A party in Los Angeles on Dec. 3 will celebrate the opening of the two boutiques. A dinner will follow a private screening of a restored version of the 1948 film ''Joan of Arc'' starring Ingrid Bergman. The co-chairwomen of the event are Jodie Foster, Isabella Rossellini and Winona Ryder.

Richard Avedon photographed the current Max Mara advertising campaign, which features the model Maggie Rizer with a Joan of Arc hairdo. Marina Rinaldi's ads, with the slogan ''Style is not a size . . . it's an attitude,'' has a whimsical quality, with a healthy-looking model making gravity-defying leaps. The ads run in fashion magazines and on billboards and bus shelters.

All this is in aid of a company that has never set the fashion world on fire yet managed to attract customers like Ms. Rossellini, Minnie Driver and C. Z. Guest.

Marina Rinaldi is the first plus-size line to be carried by Bergdorf's, said Joseph Boitano, the store's executive vice president and general merchandise manager.

''We'd always done some large sizes, but mostly on a special-order basis,'' he said. ''We knew we had a customer who wore large sizes and could buy other things here, but not ready-to-wear. So we went into the market knowing that anything we bought had to be on a par with the quality of the rest of the store. Marina Rinaldi is at that level.''

For spring, Bergdorf's will add the new Rebecca Moses large-size line as a complement to Marina Rinaldi, he said.

The Marina Rinaldi stores at 800 Madison Avenue (between 67th and 68th Streets) and at 319 Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills are the first in this country, and will be watched closely by the parent company, Mr. Maramotti said, to determine whether more will follow. The line has already found fans in Rosie O'Donnell, Roseanne Barr (who dropped $10,000 in one visit to Madison Avenue), Star Jones and Camryn Manheim.

Max Mara, which started in Italy in 1951 as one of the first fashion houses to offer ready-made clothes to Italian women, was founded by Mr. Maramotti's father, Achille. It is still family-owned, with Luigi's brother, Ignazio, sharing the title of managing director and their sister, Ludovica, chairwoman of one of the family's six manufacturing firms.

All the clothing is made in company-owned factories, three of which are in Reggio Emilia, where the company is based. Max Mara is now the largest ready-to-wear company in Italy, producing 20 collections. Among them are Sportmax, younger and more fashion-forward than Max Mara; Weekend, which is casual, and Pianoforte, the evening-wear division. Prices range from $450 to $650 for jackets, $800 to $2,000 for coats.

Unlike other old-line houses looking to glamorize their images and increase sales by hiring high-profile designers, Max Mara depends on an anonymous design team headed by Laura Lusuardi. Mr. Maramotti says his company is more interested in quality than fashion, yet Max Mara regularly presents its namesake collection and Sportmax on the runways in Milan during the semiannual show seasons. The lines are reviewed as seriously as those of Armani, Versace and Gucci, though not with the same superlatives.

Yet the company's sales in this country have increased 500 percent since 1994, and with more boutiques set to open, the Maramottis' hopes are high that the company's profile will also keep growing.

Interesting Comparisons

Is it worth it? For 200 calories, is it worth it?

I found this so interesting (thanks, Meghan)!!!

source: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-200-calories-look-like.htm

Plus-Size Apparel Chains Face Growing 'Invisible' Competition

Plus-Size Apparel Chains Face Growing 'Invisible' Competition by Karlene Lukovitz, Friday, Jun 29, 2007 5:00 AM ET THE PLUS-SIZE AND BIG-AND-TALL APPAREL business is booming--precisely the reason that the major specialty chains are vulnerable to a growing but largely "invisible" threat from a host of mainstream retailers. It's not hard to understand why retailers ranging from mass to upscale are looking to increase their share of this market. According to a new study from the Packaged Facts Division of Marketresearch.com, sales of women's/girls' plus-size apparel across all channels reached $47 billion last year, accounting for 27% of all clothing sales and nearly 40% of all women's/girls' apparel sales. Men's/boys' big-and-tall sales reached $29 billion, representing more than 16% of all clothing sales and--believe it or not--50% of all men's/boys' apparel sales. In total, plus-size/big-and-tall sales accounted for 43% of all apparel sales, up nearly a full percentage point from 2005. Between 2001 and 2006, the plus-size and big/tall segments grew by 41% and 40%, respectively, and they're projected to grow by 37% and 47% between 2006 and 2012, to reach $65 billion and $42 billion. That's average growth of 41%, to nearly $107 billion, for the market as a whole. The specialty market is heavily dominated by just a few chains. On the women's/girls' front, Charming Shoppes generated an estimated $2.2 billion in plus-size sales in its most recent fiscal year through Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherines Plus Sizes and a new intimate-apparel chain launched last year, Cacique. United Retail, Inc. and its Avenue brand runs a distant second (about $462 million in sales). Casual Male Retail Group, with its Casual Male XL and Rochester Big & Tall brands, with $468 million in sales, is the only major player in the big/tall specialty sector. The specialty majors and a plethora of smaller players generated an estimated $12.5 billion in plus-size sales and $7.1 billion in big/tall sales last year--nearly $20 billion in total. That means specialty chains have a 26% market share, to non-specialized marketers' 74% share ($56.3 billion in 2006 sales). Most of these non-specialized sales are through mass merchandisers, supermarkets, chain drugstores and department stores, but PF estimates that up to $8.6 billion is generated through direct-sales channels such as mail-order houses, e-tailers and television home shopping. Most important, non-specialty retailers hold that nearly three-quarter share of market while making virtually no effort to promote the availability of larger sizes--in fact, using quite the opposite strategy. PF notes that Wal-Mart in all likelihood sells more plus-size/big-and-tall apparel than any other retailer, and that brands like Ralph Lauren and Liz Claiborne also quietly carry large sizes (up to 22 or 24 women's). In other words, while specialized marketers/brands position on size, non-specialized marketers extend the same brand positioning across all sizes. "It's easy to see how larger consumers gravitate to non-specialized brands if desired styles are available in plus or big-and-tall sizes," comment the analysts. In fact, they maintain, the specialty channel is to a great degree at the mercy of non-specialized channels and "will only thrive as long as mass retailer-marketers, as a group, seem to ignore larger people's clothing needs." If mass retailers began including more diverse body types in their advertising, as they now include different races and ethnicities, the specialty channel, which is "on the bubble," would suffer greatly, they predict. Because of the increasing competition and the difficulty of predicting how non-specialized retailer-marketers' strategies will play out going forward, PF projects growth for specialty retailer-marketers alone at a "conservative" 20% over the next six years (to reach $23.6 billion). What are specialty chains doing to fight back? While retail sales will always dominate, multi-channel strategies are more critical than ever now. Charming Shoppes already has several catalogs and is launching a Lane Bryant catalog in the fall. Both Charming Shoppes and United Retail report double-digit percentage growth in e-commerce (in fact, UR reported 52% growth for fiscal 06), and both are continuing to invest in online infrastructure and organization. Like apparel marketers of all kinds, plus-size marketers are analyzing the performance of their sites and are particularly drawn to the measurability of online search and affiliate marketing, says Denise Zimmerman, president and chief strategic officer for NetPlus Marketing, which numbers Lane Bryant among its clients. "There's a huge opportunity for those who are willing to add a slight level of risk, by introducing targeted online branding and image elements, like display and rich media ads" to the marketing mix, she adds. PF sees major opportunities for all marketers of larger-size clothing in the undertapped teens and tweens markets and urges upscale brands to rethink their "hidden" agendas. "The upscaling of the plus-size/big-and-tall clothing market has lagged well behind the same trend in mainstream clothing market," they note. "If marketers can overcome the idea that big body size should not be associated with their famous elegant brands, there is money to be made." The growing presence of digital measuring kiosks (DMKs) in retail stores could benefit specialty stores but is more likely to make it easy for mainstream stores to compete. Small manufacturing runs of large sizes are cost-prohibitive, but DMKs could enable custom-tailored, on-demand orders of stylish, branded clothing, points out PF.

Source