Edith Will knows what it’s like to go into a department store looking-even desperately hoping-to buy a stylish dress, a business suit or blouse and to walk away disappointed, money still in hand.
For years, Will walked down that aisle herself, until she opened her own business, Xtra Inches in St. Charles. The store, which caters to women sizes 14 to 52, is capitalizing on a reality that most retailers were slow to grasp. “Thirty-four percent of American women are size 14 or larger,” said Will, citing a statistic from Plus Size magazine.
For years, Will said she found herself ready to spend money on clothes but unable to find attractive ones in her size. “I got tired of looking for something to wear and being told (a store) didn’t have it or to look for it in the back room, where they hid clothing for large-size women,” Will said.
The store owner’s bad experience has guided her retailing philosophy of having a large stock with many different sizes.
Catering to the large-size market may well turn out to be a gold mine for Will. According to Linda Arroz, editor of BBW magazine (for Big Beautiful Women), the large-size clothing industry rang up sales to the tune of $10 billion last year. Perhaps a bit hopefully, Arroz said she believes consumers are seeing more large-size clothing on store racks because “the pressure is off to conform to a misaligned sense of beauty.”
