Expanding Market of Outsize Clothing

Have you seen or at least heard the stories of your grandma stitching clothes of various sizes- personalized clothes for each and every member of the family? Today, no one has so much of time to stitch clothes or even get them stitched from professional tailors. What all of us do is, go to a boutique or a mall and buy clothes of standard sizes available there! Many of you might recall your experience of not getting perfect sized dresses because of your being petite or plus size or tall and some of you would have even written your feedback to the retailer. Why am I telling all this to you? In fact, while surfing net today, I saw a news which told about the expanding outsize clothing segment of apparel garments market and it's really interesting to know the reasons for this growth!

Factors for Growing Demand of Outsize Apparels

• Globally, people are always on a move, which creates a diverse demographic in a country and the apparel suppliers and retailers must sell customized clothing.

• Due to the changing dietary and work habits, the proportions of petite, plus-size, and tall individuals in a country's population also change creating demand for garments of various sizes.

• Globalization have resulted in the apparel garment companies marketing their products in different countries having differently shaped people and thus they have to produce outsize clothing too, along with the regular ones.

• Apparel Manufacturers and clothing retailers are working in collaboration, retailers taking feedback from the customers and passing it on to the manufacturers who then make garments that fit the customers like never before.

The Growth of Outsize Apparels

The outsize apparel garment market, which manufactures clothing for petite, plus-sized and tall customers, is fast growing in scale and sophistication. According to the United States Department of Commerce, outsize apparel sales grew from less than 5% of total market share in 1980 to nearly 20% in 2008. It is expected to reach US$73.3 billion and will represent 28.8% of all US apparel sales by 2014. From among this outsize apparel market, most of the growth is recorded by the plus-sized apparels, thanks to the increased daily intake of calories. As far as petite apparel is concerned, the demand in units has fallen in the last two years due to reducing percentage of petite women in the population but revenues are likely to rise in the future due to rising unit prices, higher quality and fit. Tall customers represent a small but fast-growing segment of the total apparel clothing and garments , that has recorded 40% growth in three years. If the garment manufacturers and dealers in wholesale apparels are reading this, I must tell that the tall market hides immense opportunities to profit from the global market gap between demand and supply.

I've given this data just to give an idea about the gradual changes in average clothing size which has provided the necessary incentive for manufacturers and wholesale apparel suppliers to deliver fashionable outsize clothing in a variety of styles. So, now you can get personalized clothing in the guise of mass customization!