One of the sad realities of existing on this planet in a larger-sized body is that products you purchase to adorn your body are often priced higher, have less selection, or are simply not available. Retailers justify their price hikes by marketing the idea that larger sizes use so much more materials that warrant a much higher price tag than the petites and youth-sized clothing. Obviously, larger sizes do use more material (duh), but the amount of material used doesn't seem to correlate with the amount of the price increases. And then, since there is more material involved overall, you pay higher shipping costs because shipping carriers determine their prices by weight and dimensions, i.e., a larger package with heavier stuff in it costs more to ship anywhere than the same product in a smaller size going to the same place via the same carrier. And we've found that retailers carry fewer stock of larger-sized items, or designs are simply not made suitable for larger-sized garments. This is all a subtle (or not so subtle) shaming we all endure. It's nothing new. But it sucketh. We're trying to fight back in little ways.
When we started this business, we knew we wanted to make tee shirts and other apparel displaying our own designs. We wanted to make our products available to the most amount of people, and we're particularly sensitive to the larger-sized humans in our circles. We have family and friends who can't really afford to pay the higher prices on many clothing items, and so they end up going without or ordering less of the stuff they love. So we set out to find quality substrate products at affordable prices in a variety of colors, sizes, and styles. Yes, every single supplier raises prices as the sizes go up, oftentimes significantly, and we were shocked to discover how many popular brands do not even offer products in the larger sizes! We selected our main tee shirt brand, Next Level Apparel, because, while not perfect, they provided the best offering of all our criteria. And also, we love the softness, quality, and selection! We looked at the famous Gildan tees, usually the cheapest of all the brands, but we found that their comfort to quality ratio wasn't great. And even worse, they have a huge selection of products, but our favorites were often out of stock at our suppliers' warehouses. Bella+Canvas tees, another popular brand, while soft and airy, seemed so lightweight that it often felt transparent, which was extremely uncomfortable. We have our eyes on a couple of up-and-coming brands that are making great progress, and we remain on the lookout for other offerings for future product lines too.
With our main brand selected, to further demonstrate our values, we made the decision to maintain the same price across all the sizes we offer, sacrificing our potential profits in an effort to support our plus-sized friends. Believe me, the profits definitely shrink quickly as we climb the size chart, but we're committed to helping where we can while we can. We can't control the shipping carriers' prices, but at least we're not challenging our customers from both sides.
One of the issues that cropped up immediately during our testing phase was that our designs needed to be upscaled to look normal on a larger-sized garment. On an early shirt we made, the design was so commically small that it looked like the model was a youth wearing her parent's shirt! This means that instead of ordering one design print, we typically order three of each design--and yes, that's at least triple the price. We feel it's worth it to provide a stellar product no matter your size.
And then there was the challenge of the models. I have a separate blog post about my thoughts about the model industry and why I chose AI as our mockup choice, so check that out here. We didn't just want to offer our designs in a variety of sizes; we also wanted to SHOW the designs on different types of bodies (inclusive sizes, genders, ages, and ethnicities). We never expected that decision to be such a challenge. We have been experimenting with several different AI image generators over the last year or so, and we were extremely surprised that all but one of them would not allow us to use prompts referencing larger-sized humans. No matter how carefully we worded the keyword prompts, we got warnings about community violations and disallowed keywords. Things that make you go, "Hmmmmm," indeed. We finally found one engine that not only allowed us to get results for larger models, but the results were respectful, beautiful, photorealistic, and all sorts of inclusive. What a relief! We aren't the only ones working towards inclusivity, thank the Light, but it's a steep slope to slog for the cause. Hopefully it'll get progressively easier, and someday seeing images of models like ourselves beautifully showcasing goods we want and need won't be so profoundly refreshing as this practice matures and comes more into mainstream.
Anyway, these are some of our thoughts on size inclusivity. There's a larger conversation going on in the fashion and other industries and communities, and we applaud the tiny but significant steps forward. We're surely here for it! We're always open to conversations and suggestions of how we can do better at making this world a comfortable place for all sorts of bodies to coexist.
