Big-and-tall retailer continues to grow

Darcie Lunsford
South Florida Business Journal

Targeting men with both sizable builds and wallets, Casual Male Retail Group is expanding its luxury-clothing arm in South Florida and nationwide.

Rochester Big & Tall in Boca Raton marked its grand opening Dec. 1 with a visit by Casual Male CEO David Levin.

In the fashion world, "big-and-tall guys get shorted," Levin said as waiters balancing trays of champagne and wine glided through the new 7,000-square-foot store on Glades Road.

Burberry, Tommy Bahama, Polo and other fashion-forward brands are readily available for regular-size men, but not for men with 44-plus waists and 48-plus-size chests. Rochester forges deals with these and other high-end designers to make clothes big enough to fit its customers.

"We kind of consider ourselves the Neiman Marcus of big-and-tall," Levin said.

Levin is neither big nor tall, but he oversees the 491-store Casual Male, a mid-priced big-and-tall retailer, along with the more highbrow Rochester chain.

Canton, Mass.-based Casual Male acquired the 23-store Rochester chain in October 2004 for $15 million in cash and the assumption of $5 million in debt.

The acquisition is the latest stitch in the retailer's plan to repair the formerly bankrupt Casual Male chain, which it acquired at a May 2002 court auction.

Now, the company is banking its future on the expectation that the luxury end of the big-and-tall market will grow.

"We are looking for growth and we thought there would be a lot of synergy between the two chains," Levin said. "There is nobody like Rochester today."

The big-and-tall market is arguably fragmented, served by mix of department stores, specialty shops and catalogues.

But, as demographics clearly indicate, big and tall is a growing segment.

The average American man is about 1.5 inches taller and 25 pounds heavier than he was in 1960, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The average man now weighs 191 pounds.

A growing market
Over time, the big-and-tall slice of the apparel market has grown, but not at the pace of American's expanding waistlines, retail industry observers say. Last year, the big-and-tall segment raked in $4.7 billion, according to New York-based retail researchers NPD Group.

Retail economists, like Steve Spiwak of Retail Forward, say style choices are something that big men want.

"I think [the big-and-tall market] has suffered from a lack of a strong fashion statement," Spiwak said. "And the retailers who are on the leading edge of that will likely benefit."

According to Retail Forward market surveys, about 35 percent of men wear big-and-tall sizes.

With annual incomes between $50,000 and $100,000, Spiwak said, they also have money to spend.

"The sector is poised for growth," he added.

With both store brands, Casual Male's strategy is to operate stores with visible locations that offer a wide assortment of big-and-tall clothing.

But that is where the similarity stops.

The average Casual Male customer spends $80 a visit, while Rochester shoppers spend $400. Annual sales generated from an average Casual Male store are about $650,000, while Rochester stores generate about $2.3 million.

"That is why, strategically, we are focusing on the expansion of the Rochester brand," Levin said.

Casual Male's third quarter sales jumped more than 25 percent over figures from the same quarter last year, to $93.8 million. The boost was largely due to the acquisition of the Rochester stores, which tossed $17.5 million into revenue, according to the company's SEC filings. A comparison of same-store sales for the first nine months of the year shows an increase of about 3.1 percent, which trends higher than the 1.4 percent being seen by the apparel chain stores as a whole.

The Rochester chain, which has a long-standing store in Aventura, had been family run since its turn-of-the-century opening.

But, despite its strong sales, the family lacked the capital to expand, said Bill Sockolov, whose great-uncle founded the store in California. Sockolov now oversees merchandising and operations under the new Casual Male ownership.

"Men want to look sharp," he said. "Designers are not coming to us and saying they want to do big and tall. We are going to them."