Whole girth catalog

As Americans grow bigger, the makers of everything from coffins to office chairs are helping them fit in.

[Times art (with apologies to Botero) : Jeff Goertzen]

The world doesn't fit Americans anymore.

Everything's too small. People are not only too big for their britches, they're too big for their wristwatches, beds, office chairs, cars and airplanes. Even their umbrellas are too small.

More than two-thirds of U.S. adults meet the government's definition of being overweight, and one in five is obese. They've thrown manufacturers into a redesigning frenzy in recent years because traditional size standards no longer apply.

But Bill Fabrey, co-owner of Amplestuff in Bearsville, N.Y., has been thinking big since 1988, when he started his mail-order business specializing in products for the larger set.

Fabrey knew heavier people had special needs, especially when business partner Nancy Summer was humiliated on a commercial flight. She weighs more than 400 pounds and requires a seat-belt extender when she travels.

"Her plane was on the runway, but it turns out they didn't have the right seatbelt extender for her, so they had to taxi back to the gate to get one," he says. "All the other passengers were glaring at her. Can you imagine going through that?

"I could see with my own eyes the kind of issues Nancy has had to deal with, so we sat down one day and we said there has to be things that would make life easier for a larger person." (Fabrey describes himself as a "chubby" 5 feet 10.)

Among the hundreds of items Amplestuff.com offers today are seatbelt extenders that can be discreetly taken aboard planes by passengers. Online shoppers also can buy such items as oversized clothing hangers so that larger garments won't fall off, bathroom scales in increments of 400, 500 or 1,000 pounds, and 96-inch dressmaker tape measures.

Whether it's a mom-and-pop shop such as Amplestuff or a major corporation, the manufacturing world has happily wrapped its arms around this expanding demographic, capitalizing on a bloated America.

The study of body sizes and measurements has a name: anthropometry. And one facet of it, 3-D body scanning, is helping shape how manufacturers can better fit bigger Americans. Such retailers as Sears, Liz Claiborne, Land's End and Jockey are sponsors of an extensive survey due next month.

For decades, overweight people have not been a target market - other than for weight-loss products, a growing industry of $39.85-billion in 2002. Now, rather than being ignored, they're buying larger, more spacious, more comfortable products across the spectrum:

* The International Sleep Products Association, a Virginia company representing the mattress industry, reports a trend toward bigger bedding. Until 1991, full-size (or double) mattresses dominated sales, but they've been surpassed by queen-size mattresses as the top seller, with king-size also gaining in popularity, vice president of marketing Nancy Blatt says.

* Steelcase, a Michigan office furnituremaker featured in a Time magazine story on the subject this year, has designed an office chair, the Criterion Plus, that's built with heavy-gauge steel and high-tension support for people weighing up to 500 pounds.

* Auto manufacturers are designing car interiors with a few extra inches of elbow room. "And many are using a denser foam for seats, because it lasts longer," says industry analyst Art Spinella, head of CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore. Perhaps not coincidentally, sales of SUVs and pickups surpassed passenger cars in 2002, with Ford's Lincoln Navigator and Expedition specifically designed with added interior space.

* Even casket builders are turning out extra-large coffins that can hold a body up to 700 pounds, such as Goliath Casket of Lynn, Ind., profiled recently in the New York Times. One of Goliath's triple-wide coffins measures 44 inches across instead of 24, and they're selling five a month.

The greatest impact is being felt in the clothing industry, says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for New York's NPD Group. The plus-size market equates to $17-billion, or 20 percent of overall clothing sales for women, according to Cohen. It's not just specialty stores such as Lane Bryant. Many major retailers are involved, including JCPenney, Target, Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom.

"The American population is getting bigger in two ways," Cohen says. "First, we're just bigger than we were 200 years ago, taller, bigger boned. But we're also getting heavier. And the manufacturing and retail industry has gotten over the image mystique and recognized the business opportunity.

"It has also recognized that people who are overweight are readily accepting it. We eat more, we eat bigger portions. So the industry is beginning to say we need to treat big people as regular people. We can no longer say to them, "You go shop in a different department, or you go shop in a different store."'

Dr. Matthew P. Reed, an ergonomics researcher at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, agrees with Cohen that the biggest change is in the clothing industry. But he says evidence does not support the common belief that Americans are getting taller, requiring a redesign of doorways, for instance.

"Americans aren't getting bigger so much as wider and further around," he says. "So things like airline seats are becoming more cramped on average. What's happening is some changes in the margins of things that have to do with width."

That's where body scanning has come in.

"One of the things we're seeing is that people are getting wider in the hips and gaining weight overall," says Jim Lovejoy, director of SizeUSA, a national survey utilizing a 3-D body scanner to study the dimensions of thousands of men and women of many sizes, ages and ethnicities in the past year.

"There's been a lot of frustration on the consumer side with things that don't fit, and part of the reason is that the standard sizings have evolved ever so slightly from very old data."

The project, which will publish its data in November, has drawn interest from places as diverse as a wristwatch company and fitness centers. It is of particular interest to the clothing industry. But even the Navy is a sponsor.

In fact, Reed says, the military has had a keen interest in body scanning. A substantial percentage of fighting forces and support staff are civilian reservists and the National Guard.

"These people don't always meet the same criteria that active duty military meet in terms of fitness," he says. "In fact, the military is needing to provide personal protective equipment for people who are considerably portlier than they've been in the past."

The first 3-D body scanning study was conducted in the mid '90s by the Air Force. It wanted to help NATO countries design and manufacture tools for the defense industry. The result was CAESAR, the Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource.

The goal was to use its scanner to measure the bodies of potential enlistees. But to attract extra funding, the Air Force joined forces with industry to create data for auto, apparel and furniture manufacturers. When scanning began in 1997, one development quickly surprised testers.

"We were concerned that we would have difficulty getting larger people to participate because they might not like to be scanned," says Kathleen Robinette, principal research anthropologist for the Air Force Research Laboratory and director of the CAESAR project.

"But it turned out to be the opposite. Larger people had trouble getting clothes to fit, seats that accommodate them, especially in airplanes - that seemed to be one of the biggest issues they had. So they were very enthusiastic about the study."

Several thousand people - from 18 and 65, male and female - were scanned while standing and sitting. The data was made available last year to manufacturers - from clothing to furniture to truck companies - that helped sponsor the project.

"I think CAESAR is changing the way (manufacturers) do things," Robinette says. "It's forcing them to think about doing their designing a different way."

At the Ford Motor Co. in Michigan, Michael Arbaugh, a leading car-interior designer, helped make the seats of the Lincoln Navigator an inch wider and created more space between the driver and steering wheel. "Our goal was to focus on making our interiors more comfortable and larger on the inside, making sure than we can accommodate the bigger stature people," he says. "Nobody likes to drive with the door armrest up against their body."

Arbaugh says the standard guideline for car design uses the measurements on the high end of the scale, which is the 95th percentile male: about 6 feet 2, 244 pounds. "Now we find ourselves going up to the 98th percentile for males," he says.

The Expedition and F-150 trucks, like the Navigator, have been designed with more roominess, as has the compact Focus. "There's just been a cohesive effort to make interiors look and feel larger," he adds. "I think the whole industry is doing this."

Many car companies also are making seatbelt extenders for large drivers. But the modifications extend well beyond the highway.

Steelcase, the Grand Rapids office furnituremaker, has two new hot-selling chairs for the workplace: the Criterion Plus, designed to support 500 pounds, and the Leap, engineered to hold up to 300 pounds.

The sturdier chairs resulted from "just observing customers," says product manager Ken Tameling. "And we listened to facilities managers talk about their needs; were were getting an awful lot of requests for furniture that can support bigger people."

So Tameling and his engineering team made the Plus with a bigger seat with higher density foam, a reinforced base, a frame of heavier gauge steel, a higher pressure pneumatic rod to lift the chair up and down, and greater back-tension to support reclining.

"We're seeing the benefit of being able to support the market," Tameling says.

The coffin industry, as reported recently, is in the midst of rethinking not only the size of caskets, but vaults, hearses, graves and scoops that dig the graves. "Many people in this country no longer fit in the standard-size casket," David Hazelett, president of coffin company Astral Industries, told the New York Times.

One unresolved issue is that of airline seat sizes; they are too small for some obese people, who are sometimes asked to buy two seats - a big sore point.

"The seat width is really constrained by the width of the airplane, so there really is no changing that unless they were to go from three on a side to two on a side," says Bruce Bradtmiller, president of Anthrotech, an Ohio company that studies human dimension and product design. "That would have such a dramatic economic impact, it's not going to happen."

Of course, health implications of obesity, including heart disease, stroke and diabetes, remain a major concern. But now, consumer implications have become part of the picture more than ever.

"Despite all the dieting and all the fitness, and the weight-loss salons, there's simply more awareness that Americans on the average have been getting fatter," says Amplestuff's Fabrey.

His site can offer heavy-duty kneeling pads, "reacher" poles with a clasping attachment that helps an obese person pick up something off the floor, oversize umbrellas, extra-large fanny packs and much more.

"But there are still all sorts of needs for other kinds of things," he says. "There's still no kind of lawn chair that would be safe for a larger person.

"And I still can't put in my catalog a larger airline seat."

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