I heard of something called “Filenes basement” which is like an upscale TJ maxx, and looking at the online reviews, a few criticized the place for rarely having medium sizes, but lots of extra small, or extra extra large.
Now that I think about it, I’ve seen those unusual sizes on lots and lots of discount racks from Macy’s to Marshall’s.
Ok, so I give up: If they never seem to sell, why make so many? Haven’t the bigshots in the garment industry figured out to make more mediums in blue and fewer XXXXXL’s in fuscia? What am I missing?
I think it is confirmation bias. I can tell you that no matter what size I have been I’ve always seen tons of stuff for people much smaller and much bigger than me on the clothing racks and very little that holds appeal in my size whether that size was a 10 or an 18.
I haven’t noticed this either. I was recently at Express, and they had exactly one shirt in my size – and it was the white one that everyone tried on just to see if other shirts would fit. They had to order the shirts I wanted online. It was a week before I could wear them.
My understanding is that you’re confused. In my stats class in college, our professor brought in all the data about size ranges and used actual numbers from different retailers. Even though more people actually wear XL (America: fuck ya!), the retailers often still do ye olde bell curve-- so they actually order far more mediums.
And it may just be confirmation bias on your behalf because as a fat ass, I know that when I go to Ross or TJ Maxx, I don’t see much in my size, but I see about 10,000 size 8 jeans and 100,000 size medium shirts. Just like in the clearance section of regular stores, there’s often a million size 8 bottoms and dresses.
Somewhere like TJ Maxx will be getting leftovers anyway. The common sizes sell out faster, thus leaving you only extremely large and small sizes to choose from.
I’m surprised that Filene’s Basement is still around, but as a chain store. Filene’s closed years ago, and I’m not sure what’s there and in the basement now. I think it’s a Macy’s.
The Small and medium are all you find in clearance around here and even staying until the next year’s clearance season. Just like you don’t find the 10 1/2 to 11 sizes in men’s shoes in America after two weeks, especially wide widths, because the assortments are made for the Asian markets. Get your 10 1/2 shoes wide width the first two weeks after they arrive or your screwed. I also have to bitch that the men’s hats and gloves are too small for Americans.
It depends on the locale. I can assure you that in Los Angeles, all the size S and XS are often sold out first and there’s often a large array of XL and XXL left over. This is especially true for stores that market towards younger women. What I can’t figure out is why stores don’t keep better track of the sizes that sell better and stock more of them.
My wife’s complaint is the opposite. When she goes to stores, she says that she can never find an XS or size 0, but that there are tons of much larger sizes.
You should vacation here in NH. The clearance racks are full of XS shirts, especially at Target. I usually find my usual shirt size too (S) without a problem, but there are few M or L to ever be found, but XL is a popular leftover too.
She’s not wrong, though. When the average woman is a size 12-14 in pants and L in shirts, why would there be many XS or 0s for sale to begin with? It’s sort of like being left-handed and looking for something manufactured with you in mind - most companies don’t bother since the market for them is so small.
sachertorte, are you talking about men’s clothes? I have XS men’s sweaters from the gap. You can often find them in Gap Outlet stores since most men aren’t that small, either. (why more women don’t buy them, I don’t know since an XS in mens is only a little bigger than a women’s S. Lots of boys hiking boots get sold to women, so how this is different I don’t know.)
I would like to visit this fabled land of plentiful XS. Because I can’t find shit around here. And they are currently solving the problem of fewer XS/0 clothes selling by upping the total size of all the garments every year, while keeping the label the same. I was a S/2 a decade ago.
Seriously though - stocking is hard. The sizes that will sell depend on so many factors. Overstock in whatever sizes don’t sell, but I’m pretty sure it’s true that stores are ordering in less clothes in the sizes that don’t sell as well. Overstock and bargain stores receive more clothes in these sizes.
It’s not the same as shopping in person, but you can buy 79 different shirts from Walmart in XS here, another 100 at JC Penny here, and over 1000 at Target here. And you’ll note a lot of this stuff is on the virtual clearance rack because they couldn’t sell them.
Yes. Men’s clothes.
And to be fair, the trend is shifting lately. I saw a sign at J. Crew advertising “New!” XS the other day. But there have been countless times in the past where S simply didn’t exist at all. I even asked if it was a matter of being out of stock. Nope, didn’t make it in small. Medium was the smallest.
Rewind two years and finding clothes that fit was sucky.
Rewind to baggy 90’s and well, enormous shirts as far as the eye can see!
I’m not actually complaining, but the notion that XS and S exist in excess struck me as funny.
I think it’s something like the opposite of confirmation bias. I have fairly small feet (6-6.5) and a friend has larger feet (8-8.5). I found that there were always 5.5s and then nothing until 8s. She found that there were sizes up to 7.5 and then nothing until 11.
When we shop together, it seems all sizes from 5.5-9.5 are missing. At least, in shoes that anybody would be interested in that are on sale. There are always plenty of full-price shoes in our sizes, just not shoes that we want to buy.
Or, if it’s the kind of shoe I might want to buy but she won’t, then they will have it in her size, but not mine. (On sale.)
But really, there is so MUCH of everything, you can always find SOMETHING. It may not be the exact thing you set off to buy, but it’s not like you have to walk out of the store naked. I once figured if everyone in Denver walked into the one branch of Macy’s where I worked and walked out with just one thing, there would still be tons and tons of stuff left.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an XXXL but, yes, the middle sizes do sell faster.
When I worked in a shoe store as a teenager, we’d get different quantities of the different size shoes. So, for instance (and using Australian shoe sizes here), we’d get maybe 1 x size 5s, 2 x size 6, a zillion x 7 and 8, 2 x size 9, 2 x size 10 and maybe 1 x size 11. At the end of the season when they went on sale, there would be 1 x size 6, 1 x size 9, 2x size 10 and maybe a size 5 and size 11. If someone only shopped the sales, they could very well conclude that we only stocked very small and very large sizes when the actual answer is that we sold out of 7s and 8s quickly because they were the most common sizes.
My mother used to be department manager for the children’s clothing department of a store in a small, local chain. She did keep track of what sold and asked to order more of it; most of the time, she was shot down by someone at the corporate level. For instance, certain colors of knee socks sold better than others because local Catholic schools required them for the girls’ uniforms. She sent in written requests repeatedly and was told that every store got the same mix of colors, no exceptions. Every spring she’d get a bunch of boys’ Baltimore Orioles T-shirts, because that’s what the boys in the corporate HQ’s hometown wanted, but she’d get requests for Phillies stuff. And so on.
I’m tall and chunky and hard to fit. When I ask if the store has a particular garment in my size, I often find myself talking about my mother’s experience, and from what I’ve been told by many people in many stores on two continents, this crap goes on everywhere and often. Shoe stores in Scandinavia, for instance, may get the same mix of sizes in women’s shoes that the factories send to stores in Italy and Spain, in spite of the fact that Scandinavian women are on average taller and therefore have longer feet. And this is not in the individual store’s ability to change, because the decision is made centrally or even by the factory or the designer.
When our older son was going through his growth spurt, I discovered that there’s a real gap in between the largest boys’ sizes and the men’s sizes that are easy to find. It’s true - while women’s racks are full of sizes S and XS and even XXS, men’s sizes seem to start at M. And medium is simply too large for slender men and those gangly teenaged boys. I did a lot of digging and I saved everything I could for our younger son, who will be heading into that stage any day now.
In 1985, some dude with the old-fashioned name of Amancio Ortega, who owned a small chain of stores, had the idea of training store employees to order what they thought would sell in their area, to tell corporate when people had asked about something not stocked (“do you have this jacket in burgundy?”), and to send them what they requested. Not only does Zara (and its sister brands) have different items in diferent countries, or in different towns within the same country, but even in different stores within the same town - and it would probably have never grown as big as it has without that approach. Group Inditex is still the exception, though.
That’s it exactly. People assume that the proportions of sizes in front of their eyes are indicative of the stocking pattern of what they are buying. This is patently ridiculous. No-one would stay in business routinely buying stock that no-one will buy. Even on a day to day basis the popular sizes disappear until the racks are restocked. The odd sizes there may only be restocked once in a while.