I used to find this to be the case with clothes. I’m size medium, and always have been, and when I first started venturing out to buy my own clothes, there’d be very few if any my size, and shitloads of XXXL. Disappointingly, many of my friends and family would fit said XXXL; I was the anomaly in my group. Nowadays, though, I have rarely had a problem finding plenty of mediums. Media. Medii.
However, shoes are another matter. As I am a cheap bastard and refuse to pay over $50 for any shoes, my options are fewer, therefore my median size is sold out sooner.
The one thing all stock tracking systems lack is an effective way to know what didn’t sell because they were out of that size and the would-be customer walked away empty-handed. OTOH, for any short-lived product such as clothing, having any unsold at season’s end really eats your overall margin on that particular style+color+size. It is a very hard problem and the long lead times in the industry make it even harder.
But yes, dumb corporate “HQ knows all” thinking doesn’t help.
I do know that the clothes I have the hardest time finding are always the ones in my size. Whether I’m scrawny (then) or pudgy (now) the other sizes are abundant. Mine isn’t. Or so it seems. Confirmation bias indeed.
Of course, but if the size 11 (in AUS is that a Giant’s foot size). or the size 6 (midget) is usually on clearance cause it doesn’t sell, why buy it to begin with? And if you sell out of the average sized 7&8s, why not buy more of them?
Back when Ralph Lauren Polo shirts were flying off the rack, I remember walking by a sale table that had an inordinate amount of pink (and some purple) polos, that the dudes didn’t want to buy because the color might make them seem a bit less than supermanly. But why order so many pink polos for the men’s department? I just don’t get it, who thought that there is a giant demand for pink and purple clothes for men? Just like it seems the sale rack is freak sizes only. if they don’t sell, why order them?
[QUOTE=flodnak]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Tell me about it. I wear a size 42 shoe, and almost every womens shoe store stops at size 41. It drives me mad, and I really don’t get it - I’m big, but hardly freakish, and know several women with the same problem. The shoe stores must think my money smells bad or something.
I’m more or less resigned to wearing unisex running shoes and surplus army boots. I’m not a girly girl, or I’d have a complex by now.
This used to be my problem, but in the wonderful world of the interweb not any more. My favourite online store here in the UK is http://www.bigshoeboutique.co.uk
Here where I live, the obesity rate is about 70% (I’d call it 90%), so most all the clothing is in the XL and up range. It’s next to impossible to find smaller sizes–those usually end up going to the 6 year olds around here. I buy most of my clothing (Small-Medium) online.
A few years back I did purchasing for 10 very small athletic apparel shops.
The easiest thing to do to guarantee sell-through would be to buy nothing but the common sizes. However, once you do this you’re alienating part of your customer base.
“Do you have it in XS or XXL?”
“No, we don’t carry those sizes.”
“Well you guys suck and there’s no sense of me ever shopping here again.”
So you end up buying on a bell curve with the bulk being the common sizes and just a handful of extremes. But with that your risking being stuck with those extremes since the client base for those sizes is so small. And that’s what typically happens and that’s what ends up on the clearance racks.
I wear a 5.5, it is nearly impossible for me to buy shoes on clearance, unless I want the ugly ones no one else bought. If I am looking for a specific style of shoe, I usually check the website for stores like Cole-Haan first, then call the local store and ask if they have style X, Y and Z in stock and in my size before I trek over to the store. Some manufacturers don’t even make shoes below a 6 anymore, so I am shit out of luck from the start. I went to Macy’s to look for a pair of black ballet flats, none under size 6. I ended up buying online from Aerosoles, at least I know a 5.5 from Aerosoles fits. I hate shoe shopping with a passion…
The other complicating factor in women’s clothing is the stupid “vanity sizing.” I’m pretty sure I should be a size 8, but too often, I get excited to see a size 8 on the rack, only to find it swims no me–and sometimes, the size 4/6 does, too. I rarely see XS sizes. Sizes in women’s clothing have been running larger and larger, so that what was a 14 twenty years ago is now a size 10.
I don’t expect to see as many small sizes because, as someone has pointed out, the average American woman is size 14, and more power to her. Wait a minute! Is she a size 14 for real, or only via vanity sizing, in which case, she’s really an 18? Argh.
That’s true. vanity sizing does suck. I’m wearing a pair of jeans that are size eight and too loose right now. Why? If you look at sizing charts for different sellers, most 8s are around a 28" waist (notably not The Gap or Old Navy that decided 28" is a 6 instead, or some makers of boot cut jeans who decided it’s a 10, but better than 70% of the ones I looked up are a size 8 at a waistband of 28-29"). I measured these once: almost 31". I suppose that’s nice if you want to think you’re a size eight and you’re not, but not so good when you assumed it was a typical size eight like I did and bought them at 5am last Black Friday. This is about the only week of the month they come close to fitting…
It’s really that the right XS for me is hard to come by. At the stores you listed many of the women’s XS fits like a M at the stores I prefer to shop at - ones aimed at teens or kids with much smaller smallest sizes.
I used to do the intake paperwork for a women’s clothing shop, and I’d see what the buyer ordered. First, you have to realize that some manufacturers will make different size ranges than others…for instance, one maker might make sizes 14-24, while another one would make 16-24 for one price, and 26-32 for a higher price. Also, the manufacturers would definitely charge a higher price for the larger sizes. Frequently, the buyer had to buy “sets” of sizes, that is, one 16, one 18, two each of 20 and 22, and one 24. She would prefer to buy two or three 24s, but the designer had come up with a pattern that allowed the factory to cut out the sizes in that curve, so that’s the size assortment that the buyer could order. If she wanted those three size 24s, then she had to take three 16s, three 18s, and half a dozen each of the 20s and 22s…and we couldn’t sell them all.
I’m not a buyer so I could only guess, but I suppose you want to buy in enough stock to give you the range to cover the outliers, and enough of the popular sizes so that demand slightly outstrips supply rather than the opposite which would leave you with excess stock that you have to discount to clear (or get stuck with). People do buy the smallest and largest sizes so we did keep them in stock (for most ranges, most of the time), but in very limited quantities. Predictably, there would always be someone complaining that we never have size 6s on the occasions we did run out of them, and others asking why we never had women’s 12s even though Bigfoot wasn’t a regular customer. Women who take a size 5 would get offended that they have to shop in the children’s section because many adult ranges didn’t go down that low.
Why do stores run out of popular sizes too soon? At a guess, there’s limited supplies available to them, limited storage space for them, greater than anticipated demand for them, fixed ordering quantities from head office or similar entity, or some combination of the above. Obviously stores would love to be able to sell one to every single person who wants one, and it must be a fine juggling act to make sure you can predict the demand and order enough so that you sell the last one on the last day of that season. Surprise, surprise… they don’t always get it right.
If you want a guarantee that there will always be something available to fit you, you need to go to a tailor or shoemaker and have it custom made.
I’ve wondered the same thing for years. As I’ve grown older and my size changes it is consistently the size that is missing from the rack. I have to hit the stores the day the clothes are brought out. I look at the sizes I needed 30 years ago and yep, there they are in plentiful supply. At the end of the year the racks take on a circus selection. The choices are either tents or tent polls.
But that brings up another problem. I have a friend who’s too tiny to find clothes in her size, so she shops the boys’ department. (Girls’ departments have styles that are way too young. A woman in her forties does NOT look right in a shirt that reads “Spoiled Brat.”) She’s a t-shirt and jeans type, so it works for her. But that only works if you have a boyish figure, which I don’t.
I understand that manufacturers wouldn’t want to make, nor store buyers want to stock, sizes that are not that popular. But really, do most American women have waists and hips that are close in size? If I find clothes that fit my booty, they swim on my waist, and I’m no J Lo. I recently spent more on alterations than I did on the skirt I bought. How did manufacturers get so out of touch?
Size Proportion of Units
XXS .01595
XS .09767
S .23845
M .31296
L .22133
XL .11361
XXL .00002
XXXL .00001
Mens
XS .00059
S .05159
M .17396
L .32433
XL .30075
XXL .14207
XXXL .00480
XXXXL .00191
