Weight loss drugs like Wegovy and others have attractive stores to meet the demand for smaller sizes.
Rent the Runway, a clothing rental subscription service, has seen the trend toward petite sizes firsthand. CEO and founder Jennifer Hyman said The Wall Street Journal that more customers are switching to smaller sizes than at any time in the last 15 years. The company caters specifically to women who may be changing their clothing size, Hyman said.
“As a company we’ve spent years developing our proper algorithms to ensure that women who are gaining or losing weight can find the right size,” Hyman said. Good luck in the email.
A Monday study by Impact Analytics, which uses AI tools to help retailers with inventory decisions, found that demand for smaller sizes is increasing in some areas. Sales of women’s button-down shirts in small sizes (XXS, XS, and S) are up 12% this year compared to 2022. Meanwhile, sales of larger sizes including XXL, XL, and L, decreased by about 11% compared to 2022. , Impact Analytics found through a survey of retailers in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
“The decline in America will have a significant impact on retailers and could cost them nearly $20 million each year due to mis-sizing,” Impact Analytics CEO Prashant Agrawal said in a statement.
The shift to smaller clothing sizes has also begun to impact how retailers view their inventory, according to a report by Impact Analytics. For years, retailers have stuck to a set of rigid sizes, which don’t meet consumer needs and can lead to missed sales and losses, writes Impact Analytics. The rise of GLP-1s, which are used to treat diabetes but can also cause weight loss, exacerbates the problem and could see retailers with 10% of their unsold inventory at the end of the year if they don’t comply. change preferences.
Inaccurate sizing is a headache for retailers with already tight margins, and can lead to missed sales when customers can’t find the size they need. Forecasting and making the right purchasing decisions is important because retailers start planning and can purchase inventory almost a year in advance, according to Impact Analytics. Retailers lose $1 trillion a year by not having the sizes customers want, according to retail analyst IHL Group.
“To put it bluntly: In a market where precision and adaptability are so important, failing to adapt to this dramatic shift in body sizes could spell financial disaster for fashion retailers,” wrote Impact Analytics.
Listening to consumer preferences is especially important in an industry that has seen stagnant sales numbers in recent months. Retail sales of apparel and clothing remained low at less than $26 billion per month in the US since January, according to data from the Census Bureau.
Rising demand for Wegovy and other weight loss drugs
The Food and Drug Administration approved Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy for use as a weight loss drug in 2021; since then the demand for it and similar drugs has exploded. An estimated 15.5 million people in the US, or about 6% of adults, have used GLP-1s injections, according to a May survey by Gallup. The groups most likely to use these drugs are women, people with insurance, and seniors between the ages of 40 and 64, according to Gallup.
Marketers targeting groups that are more likely to use GLP-1, such as women or high-income earners, will be most affected by the change in size preferences, Impact Analytics said. However, these types of consumers are also prone to jumping into “revenge buying” after a downturn—and that can present an opportunity for retailers as well.
Wegovy’s influence on the choice of clothing size may increase in the future because the high demand has caused shortages of the drug and others like it. Last month, telehealth company Ro launched a free tool to help track GLP-1 doses in pharmacies through user input. In three weeks, users sent 35,000 submissions to inform the tracker that the pharmacy does not have the GLP-1 drug the user was looking for. Those suggestions far exceed the number of 1,500 users posted at one time to inform the tracker that GLP-1 was in stock. The company said it continues to receive hundreds of missing items every day.
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