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Tapping a market of misfits

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published July 19, 2006

ODESSA — Connie Bova was looking for ''something entrepreneurial’’ to do until she went shopping for clothes for her 33-year-old husband, Jeff, who’s a slim, trim 5 feet 7.

“I went to every men’s department in two Tampa malls and couldn’t find anything in his size,’’ said Connie, 28, a recent Stetson Law School graduate. “Nothing.’’

Petite and plus-sized women complain the selection available to them is unfashionable. Big and tall men air similar complaints. But the Bovas, both former managers at Capital One, have started an online retailing site catering to men who are every bit as abused by the apparel industry.

They aim to clothe the short: be they thin or squat.

The Bovas estimate 14-million men 5-9 or shorter can’t find pants in stores made to fit them.

In the few unprofitable months their ForTheFit.com has been up and running, they have assembled a clientele of about 200 and moved the small but growing Web operation from a tiny spare bedroom to a larger rec room.

The Bovas are just one example of businesses using technology to reshape how people buy clothes.

Ready-to-wear apparel stores have done a spotty job stocking the myriad sizes customers actually need. Stores keep trimming inventory to only the most common size combinations. Some switched to simpler sizing (small, medium, large and extra-large) to cut costs.

As a result, most people today wear clothes that don’t fit. Among women, 62 percent wear the wrong size pants, according to Archetype Solutions Inc.

It’s been great for tailors, who frequently are asked to chop leg length on jeans or chinos rather that tailor the whole garment. Demand is so great that some stores even use free alterations as a customer loyalty extra if shoppers spend enough there.

The problem, as anyone who’s been to Clearwater Beach on a sunny Sunday knows, is the human body comes in a seemingly infinite number of shapes.

Over the past decade, however, two developments are driving dramatic changes. The Internet makes it possible for people like the Bovas to make a business of buyers nationwide who need inseams shorter than a standard 29 inches, neck sizes as small as a 14 or a 31-inch sleeve. Meanwhile, new technologies are emerging to make body measurement easier, so manufacturing in tiny or one-of-a-kind batches is efficient enough to be profitable.

“Mass customization will be to the 21st century what mass production was to the 20th century,’’ said B. Joseph Pine, a consultant who authored Mass Customization and Markets of One. “The apparel industry is at the leading edge because garments have few pieces (16 for a pair of shorts) and lend themselves to modular assembly.’’

Since Pine wrote his first book in 1993, progress has been slow.

Much media ink was spilled over the 1995 introduction of Levi’s custom jeans, which cost about $15 more than regular 501s. After spreading to several company-owned stores, Levi’s quietly gave up the effort in 2003.

But the executives who spearheaded the idea found venture capital to refine the method on their own. Now their Archetype runs growing custom-fit apparel services offered online by Lands’ End, JCPenney and Target.

Orders e-mailed to those online retailers are zapped to Archetype, which farms the jobs to Asian manufacturers that assemble goods one at a time to the retailer’s specifications. The factories ship them to customers in four to five weeks.

The model developed for Levi’s reduced the size combinations to about 750 after a one-on-one measurement that took 25 minutes. Archetype boiled the fitting down to a questionnaire that takes a customer 15 minutes to fill out.

The company claims finished garments in 900-million size combinations.

“That’s more size possibilities than people in the United States,’’ said Robert Holloway, chief executive of Archetype.

Lands’ End, which recently added $135 wool-blend dress pants in customized sizes to the selection of pants and dress shirts, said that in categories where shoppers have a choice, up to a third buy the customized version.

Returned merchandise, confirm JCPenney and Lands’ End, is no worse than the companies overall return rate.

Precision measuring, however, remains an expensive challenge for stores. One laser body scanner plots 300,000 different spots on the body. But it takes 20 minutes per customer. One system, which resembles standing inside a phone booth, was supposed to be running by now in Westfield Group malls, including those in the Tampa Bay area.

It’s unclear why the deal collapsed. Some say the system needed work. Others say apparel chains that created their own confusing polyglot of vanity sizes in women’s apparel, objected to their landlord providing a uniform measurement system.

Even Pine encountered bumps in the road. The consultant ordered design-your-own athletic shoes from Nike iD for a demonstration prop at his mass-customization speeches. He ended up forced to buy two pairs after learning the shoe giant can print only one custom word message on each pair, not a different word on each shoe. A football injury left one of his legs is an inch longer than the other. But the custom jeans-maker that made the only pair of pants he ever owned that fit went out of business.

“Mass customization is still the future,’’ he said. “Henry Ford may have created the assembly line in 1913, but the golden age of mass production was the 1950s.’’

Indeed, the main reason this evolution has gone so slowly has been customer resistance. People learned to accept what comes off the rack. They hate paying extra for it to fit.

The Bovas were not deterred by the competition from customizers. Those sites mostly stick to the basics: denim jeans, chinos, white and light blue dress shirts and, for the first time, dress slacks this year at JCPenney and Lands’ End.

ForTheFit.com tracked down apparel companies willing to make small sizes.

“Those customization sites basically sell $35 casual pants that fit you for $49,’’ meaning customers pay $14 more just for the fit, said Connie Bova. “In contrast, we offer our customers the same styles and better fabrics that the stores stock for everybody else.

“So if fit becomes a problem, we know a very good tailor.’’

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8252.

[Last modified July 19, 2006, 06:53:15]