I had this dialog twice this week.
Not an identical dialog. The identical one. Nearly phrase for word- in regards to the plus dimension vogue market. An government, somebody whose model actually is dependent upon plus dimension girls opening their wallets, asking whether or not GLP-1s are going to “kill” the market.
And each instances, I needed to pause. Take a breath. And resolve how to answer somebody who, regardless of years on this {industry}, nonetheless basically doesn’t perceive the neighborhood they’re purported to be serving.
The primary time this occurred to me wasn’t this week. It was 4 years in the past. A telephone name. An government sitting in a C-suite function, overseeing the path of a plus dimension model, requested me a query that stopped me chilly. I don’t bear in mind precisely how they phrased it, however the substance of it was clear: they genuinely didn’t perceive that the plus dimension client needed connection. Group. To be seen. Not simply to be bought to.
That paralyzed me for a second. As a result of this was not a junior marketer discovering their footing. This was somebody with actual decision-making energy over a model that plus dimension girls had been trusting with their {dollars}. And the elemental actuality of who that buyer was, what she wanted, what she remembered, what made her keep or stroll away without end, was not of their body in any respect.
That dialog modified how I see this {industry}. And it’s a part of why I’ve watched with real respect as some manufacturers have began including community-focused roles on the C-suite stage, as a result of the neatest ones are lastly acknowledging what the remainder of us have recognized for years: you can’t lead a plus dimension model off an outdated playbook written for a client who was by no means your buyer to start with.
What I’m watching proper now, with all of the GLP-1 anxiousness rippling via boardrooms and shopping for conferences, is that very same blind spot, simply louder, and with pharmaceutical vocabulary connected.
So, let’s discuss it.
We Have Been Right here Earlier than
Let me provide a short historical past lesson, as a result of apparently we’d like one.
Fen-Phen. Phen-Phen. The Atkins Revolution. South Seaside. Weight Watchers. Jenny Craig. HCG drops. Beachbody. Slim-Quick. The cabbage soup food regimen. Low-fat every part. Low-carb every part. Keto. Noom. The 21-Day Repair. Each journal cowl promising a brand new physique by summer season since roughly 1987.
Food plan tradition is just not new. Weight reduction as a billion-dollar {industry} is just not new. The promise that this time, this program, this capsule will lastly repair the issue, that has been the background music of plus dimension girls’s lives for many years.
And thru each single a type of cycles? The plus dimension market grew.
The worldwide plus dimension clothes market is valued at $244.85 billion in 2025 and is projected to achieve $395.60 billion by 2034. That trajectory didn’t seem regardless of many years of food regimen tradition. It appeared alongside it.
Proper now, roughly 10 million Individuals are on GLP-1 medicines. Projections put that quantity at 25 million by 2030, and that’s the optimistic finish of the estimate. In a rustic of 330 million folks, with a market constructed on a buyer base that represents nearly all of American girls, executives are treating this like a four-alarm fireplace.
Right here’s what the info really says: non-diabetic GLP-1 customers plan to remain on the treatment for an common of about 18 months, with negative effects being the first purpose folks cease. These should not everlasting, at-scale, demographic-shifting transformations. They’re particular person well being decisions, taking place in various timelines, with various outcomes, in a neighborhood that has seen each iteration of this story earlier than.
And even amongst folks actively dropping pounds on GLP-1s? They nonetheless want garments. In accordance with CNBC, buy quantity for big, further massive, and plus dimension attire mixed grew 6% in March 2026 in comparison with the prior 12 months, on resale platforms alone! The market doesn’t disappear when folks change sizes. It shifts. Garments nonetheless must be purchased. Our bodies nonetheless must be dressed.
The panic isn’t based mostly on the info.
The panic is predicated on a basic misunderstanding of who this buyer is and the way she strikes, and if we’re being sincere, on a deeply ingrained ignorance and bias about plus dimension those who the {industry} has by no means totally reckoned with.
The Actual Downside Has Nothing to Do with GLP-1s
Here’s what I would like you to know: the executives shedding sleep over Ozempic are the identical ones who by no means constructed actual relationships with this neighborhood within the first place.
That’s not an accident. That’s the precise drawback.
And it’s precisely why I’ve been preaching, for years, in regards to the pressing want for plus dimension folks in management at plus dimension manufacturers. Not as a variety checkbox. Not as a token rent. Within the rooms the place the selections get made.
As a result of how will you serve a buyer you don’t perceive, or worse, don’t care to know? Whenever you refuse to stroll in her footwear, and even take the time to know how she feels navigating a world and an {industry} that has traditionally handled her as an afterthought?
You may’t. And the GLP-1 panic is the proof.
The plus dimension vogue market has at all times operated otherwise than mainstream vogue. The metrics are completely different. The choice-making course of is completely different. The function a model performs in somebody’s life is completely different, as a result of for many years, plus dimension girls had been informed by the {industry} that they didn’t should be there. So when a model really confirmed up? Constantly, authentically, with actual funding? That loyalty went deep. And it stayed.
You can not run a plus dimension model or function within the plus dimension vogue market with the identical emotional detachment you’d apply to a straight-size class and anticipate the identical outcomes.
On this house, emotional intelligence is just not a mushy ability. It’s a enterprise technique. It’s the moat.
Analysis persistently exhibits that when clients develop an emotional reference to a model, particularly in communities constructed round shared identification and belonging, they turn out to be loyal in a means that conventional acquisition fashions can’t replicate. They spend extra. They keep longer. They bring about folks with them.
A examine printed within the Asian Journal of Public Opinion Analysis discovered a major relationship between model neighborhood belonging and buying loyalty, when emotional bonds exist inside a model’s neighborhood, they instantly affect shopping for choices.
Analysis on emotional branding additional confirms that manufacturers creating communal areas construct the very best levels of buyer dedication and advocacy, and that neighborhood members spend considerably greater than non-members over time.
This isn’t principle. We’ve watched it play out in actual time.
Eloquii is the instance I preserve coming again to. They invested in the neighborhood. They confirmed up at occasions. They put plus dimension girls of their advertising and marketing, not as a token gesture, however as the whole level. They celebrated the neighborhood and let the neighborhood have a good time them again.
The end result?
Eloquii clients had a Buyer Lifetime Worth of $251 in comparison with $204 at Torrid, measured one and a half years after a buyer’s first buy. A smaller model, with deeper worth per buyer, as a result of belief has a greenback worth.
That’s what emotional funding seems like on a steadiness sheet.
The Metrics You’ve Been Utilizing Have been By no means Proper for This Plus Dimension Style Market
Let’s outline one thing first, as a result of it retains arising on this dialog and deserves greater than a buzzword: emotional intelligence, or EQ.
In psychology, EQ is the flexibility to acknowledge, perceive, and reply to the feelings of others in ways in which construct belief and connection. In enterprise, it’s the capability to know what your buyer really feels, not simply what she buys, and to behave on that understanding persistently and authentically.
In plus dimension vogue? EQ is the entire sport.
Right here’s why this market is completely different. The plus dimension shopper has not been a impartial client with impartial procuring experiences. She has spent years, in lots of circumstances many years, being informed by the style {industry} that her physique was the issue.
She has walked into shops and located one rack within the again. She has ordered on-line in her dimension solely to obtain one thing that clearly wasn’t designed for her physique. She has watched manufacturers use her in a marketing campaign after which quietly discontinue her dimension vary when it obtained inconvenient.
She has watched manufacturers like Endlessly 21 and Anthropologie, manufacturers that take her cash, deal with her like a footnote of their visible identification whereas centering each marketing campaign round our bodies that don’t mirror her. Plus dimension clothes shot on straight dimension fashions. Her dimension tucked right into a nook of the web site with zero illustration. An entire class of erasure dressed up as commerce.
That historical past is just not background noise. It’s the working context for each buying determination she makes.
When a model really exhibits up, with actual funding, actual illustration, actual consistency, she notices. And that belief, as soon as earned, converts into one thing no normal acquisition mannequin can replicate: loyalty that’s deep, sturdy, and vocal.
She doesn’t simply come again. She brings folks along with her. She defends the model in remark sections. She posts the unboxing. She tells her neighborhood. Phrase of mouth on this house has at all times been extra highly effective than any advert spend, as a result of the bar for genuinely incomes it has at all times been so excessive.
That’s EQ functioning as a enterprise technique. And the info backs it up.
Analysis into the U.S. plus dimension vogue market exhibits that manufacturers aligning with inclusivity create stronger emotional connections with clients, connections that strengthen belief and loyalty by demonstrating actual dedication to numerous physique sorts.
Okay, can I nerd out with you for a second? Places on my strolling wiki for plus dimension vogue hat…
As a result of the numbers right here should not delicate, and this isn’t a sense. That is monetary knowledge making the case that EQ is a income technique.
Now have a look at what that really performs out to in actual numbers.
The Earnest Analytics knowledge evaluating Torrid, Eloquii, Lane Bryant, and Dia & Co discovered that Eloquii clients had a Buyer Lifetime Worth of $251 in comparison with $204 at Torrid, measured 18 months after a buyer’s first buy. Eloquii, a smaller model by each quantity metric, generated extra income per buyer over time. That hole is just not a pricing story. It’s a relationship story.
Zoom out to the broader attire {industry} for context. The common order worth throughout vogue and attire e-commerce broadly sits round $97. The repeat buyer fee for attire industry-wide runs roughly 20 to 26%.
Now think about that Torrid’s loyalty program penetration exceeds 80% of transactions, greater than triple the {industry} common repeat fee. That quantity was constructed on years of community-first advertising and marketing: actual our bodies in campaigns, influencer partnerships with precise plus dimension creators, and a model identification that made the shopper really feel like the purpose, not an afterthought.
The manufacturers outperforming on retention and lifelong worth on this house should not doing it via higher low cost codes or smarter e mail flows. They’re doing it by persistently demonstrating that they perceive who their buyer is and why she deserves to be right here.
That’s EQ in apply. And it exhibits up instantly within the P&L.
Not emotional intelligence as a buzzword. Emotional intelligence as a apply: the constant, sustained, genuine determination to deal with the plus dimension neighborhood as a classy, culturally-aware client base with actual buying energy and even realer long-term reminiscence.
Not the random government with zero expertise on this house who takes the reins of a plus dimension model and instantly tries to use Nineteen Eighties stereotypes to a 2026 client. As a result of that’s precisely what we’re watching play out, and the sizeism and classism beneath it’s displaying.
The idea that plus dimension girls are non permanent clients simply ready to turn out to be smaller ones? That isn’t a market perception. That could be a bias dressed up in a spreadsheet.
She Remembers. And She Talks.
The plus dimension shopper has a protracted reminiscence. She remembers who was there when the {industry} wasn’t. She remembers who quietly decreased their dimension vary the second gross sales slipped. She remembers which manufacturers take her cash and gained’t put her physique of their campaigns. She remembers who stopped carrying her dimension in shops whereas nonetheless operating her picture within the advertisements.
She doesn’t neglect. And she or he talks. Loudly. To everybody she is aware of.
So let’s be actually clear in regards to the two conversations taking place on this {industry} proper now.
The manufacturers asking the unsuitable questions:
- What occurs to our numbers if our clients drop some pounds?
- How can we shield our margins if GLP-1 adoption accelerates?
- Ought to we begin pulling again on prolonged sizing stock?
The manufacturers that really get it are asking one thing utterly completely different:
- What does our buyer want from us proper now?
- How can we present up for somebody navigating a well being journey, a dimension change, a life in movement?
- What’s the precise value of shedding her belief, completely, as a result of we handled her like a demographic as an alternative of an individual?
These should not the identical dialog. They by no means had been.
Manufacturers with 80%+ loyalty program penetration and clients who spend 1.3 to 1.5 instances greater than non-members didn’t construct that by operating a cute Instagram grid. They constructed it by making somebody really feel like she belonged, persistently, authentically, over time. That belonging is the product. The garments are simply how she experiences it.
You need higher numbers? Begin there.
What Getting It Flawed Truly Prices
Earlier than we even get to vogue, let me present you this sample taking part in out someplace utterly completely different. As a result of generally the clearest mirror is the one you least anticipate.
Tim Sparks began as a Pizza Hut dishwasher in 1983. He labored his means up, ultimately turning into President of Daland Company, one of many largest Pizza Hut franchisee teams within the nation. And in 2026, he’s changing 80 places again to the unique Nineteen Eighties format. Purple cups. Salad bars. Stained glass lamps. Vinyl cubicles. The entire thing.
The Pizza Hut Traditional places are actually among the many prime performers in the whole chain. Prospects are driving two and three hours to eat there. Not as a result of the pizza modified. As a result of the expertise got here again.
In the meantime, Pizza Hut company has been doing the precise reverse. 250 retailer closures had been introduced in early 2026. The dine-in format has been largely deserted. The technique was to strip out the cubicles, the salad bar, the lamps, and the expertise, and compete with Domino’s on supply logistics.
The issue with that technique? Domino’s is a expertise firm that occurs to promote pizza. Their aggressive benefit is order monitoring, supply optimization, and franchise effectivity. When Pizza Hut eradicated the expertise, they didn’t turn out to be extra aggressive. They grew to become a worse model of a model they had been by no means constructed to be.
One franchisee who grew up inside the unique expertise understood what the spreadsheet couldn’t measure. Inc. Journal framed it completely: by evoking what the model really meant to folks, Tim Sparks discovered a option to get them speaking about Pizza Hut once more. And coming again.
Company optimized the soul out of the product and referred to as it a method. A former dishwasher who by no means forgot what the expertise felt like from the within is the one bringing it again.
This isn’t a pizza story. That is an EQ story. And it’s the very same story taking part in out in plus dimension vogue proper now.
Previous Navy.
Right here is the complete arc, as a result of it issues: Previous Navy pulled plus sizes from its bodily shops in 2007. For over a decade, plus dimension girls had been informed, by a model that’s purported to be for the entire household, that their sizes existed on-line solely. Then in 2018, after years of neighborhood stress, they introduced plus sizes again into 75 choose shops. Cautious optimism. Progress, proper?
@oldnavy Aidy Bryant = mainly a dwelling, respiratory, dancing ✨ emoji #BODEQUALITY #oldnavystyle ♬ unique sound – Previous Navy
Then in 2021, Previous Navy launched Bodequality with monumental fanfare, a program that promised true dimension integration, identical types, identical costs, sizes 0 via 30, multi function place. Press liked it. The neighborhood watched rigorously. And what occurred? Lower than a 12 months later, this system was scaled again. Prolonged sizes had been pulled from dozens of shops. The rationale cited? Low return on funding.
However right here’s what they refused to acknowledge: plus dimension buyers had been conditioned for over a decade to buy Previous Navy on-line solely. You don’t get to disregard a buyer for ten years, quietly deliver her again in via the aspect door with minimal advertising and marketing and no actual neighborhood funding, after which declare her absent when she doesn’t flood your shops in underneath twelve months.
That isn’t a market failure. That’s an execution failure. A endurance failure. And albeit, a belief failure.
As I mentioned on the time: “Previous Navy had hard-core skilled plus-sized folks 10 years in the past once they pulled plus sizes out that it’s important to store on-line solely.” You can not undo a decade of conditioning in a single fiscal 12 months and name it a good check.
The neighborhood seen. The neighborhood remembered. And the neighborhood moved on.
FullBeauty Manufacturers.
Then there’s the query price asking of FullBeauty Manufacturers, an organization whose whole enterprise is constructed on the plus dimension client, whose mannequin has traditionally centered catalog acquisition and quantity over neighborhood.
In 2020, throughout a second when the whole {industry} was being requested to reckon with its relationship to Black creators and clients, a gaggle of Black plus dimension influencers, girls who had supported these manufacturers, promoted their merchandise, and constructed audiences these manufacturers instantly benefited from, crafted an open letter calling them out instantly for his or her lack of assist and funding in Black creators.
I do know as a result of TCF was a part of publishing it.
The query the letter raised then is similar query that applies now: are you able to construct a model on a neighborhood you might have by no means really invested in? Can you are taking the {dollars} and ignore the folks? The plus dimension neighborhood, Black plus dimension girls particularly, have been watching how manufacturers reply that query for years. And so they have their receipts too.
These should not historical historical past. These are current sufficient that the ladies who lived them are nonetheless procuring, nonetheless speaking, and nonetheless deciding the place to spend their cash. GLP-1s didn’t create this belief deficit. Manufacturers did. And no pharmaceutical development goes to repair it.
EQ Is the ROI in This House
I’ve spent 17 years watching this play out. And let me be clear, I’m not new to this. I’m a full on nerd for this house in one of the best ways doable. I got here up via 12 years in retail, from gross sales flooring into administration, watching how plus dimension customers had been handled in actual time, up shut, earlier than there was even a dialog about inclusivity in vogue.
I went again and obtained my MBA in advertising and marketing and centered it particularly on plus dimension vogue, as a result of I wanted the educational framework to match what I used to be already dwelling and observing. Then I constructed TCF, grew it from a weblog right into a full digital media model, and spent 17 years inside this neighborhood each single day.
That mixture, retail flooring, graduate analysis, editorial publishing, and lived expertise as a plus dimension lady on this world, is strictly what makes me say what I’m about to say with full confidence: the manufacturers panicking proper now by no means did the work. And the info I’m about to point out you is just not a principle. It’s a sample I’ve watched repeat itself for almost twenty years.
I’ve seen manufacturers pour cash into campaigns that carried out fantastically by each normal metric after which quietly fold as a result of the neighborhood by no means trusted them. I’ve watched manufacturers with a fraction of the price range construct many years of loyalty as a result of they invested in being current, on the occasions, within the content material, in the neighborhood conversations.
The distinction is at all times EQ.
Not as a mushy idea. As a aggressive benefit. Because the factor that determines whether or not a model survives a market disruption, pharmaceutical, financial, cultural, or in any other case, as a result of it has constructed one thing that can’t be replicated by a competitor in a single day: real belief with a neighborhood that has been burned earlier than and doesn’t prolong that belief flippantly.
The manufacturers that perceive this aren’t frightened about GLP-1s. They’re centered on deepening relationships. They’re asking meet a buyer the place she is, no matter dimension she wears in the present day, no matter she’s navigating in her well being and her life. They know that the shopper who feels seen and served at each level in her journey doesn’t go away. She evolves with the model.
Those who’re panicking by no means did the work to construct that sort of loyalty. GLP-1s are merely making that hole seen.
What This Second Is Truly Asking
To the manufacturers and executives in a spiral proper now: this isn’t the top of your market. That is an invite.
The plus dimension buyer is just not monolithic. She is just not disappearing. She is just not ready so that you can work out tackle her. She is totally dwelling her life, making buying choices each day, selecting the manufacturers which have proven her probably the most respect with probably the most consistency.
A few of your clients could also be on GLP-1s. Some should not. Some will cycle via sizes and again once more. Some will keep precisely the place they’re and need the identical nice choices they’ve at all times deserved.
All of them are watching the way you reply proper now.
The manufacturers that ask how can we serve our neighborhood via this second will earn one thing no algorithm can manufacture: belief that outlasts a development. Those who quietly pull prolonged sizes, trim their vary, and hedge their stock bets based mostly on pharmaceutical projections will lose one thing they can not get again.
I’ve seen it occur. I watched it occur 4 years in the past on that telephone name. I’m watching it set as much as occur once more.
The plus dimension neighborhood doesn’t want manufacturers to panic. It wants them to concentrate. It wanted that 20 years in the past too. The manufacturers that really did, those that constructed actual relationships, actual visibility, actual neighborhood funding, should not having the GLP-1 panic dialog. They know who they’re for. They’ve been displaying up.
The query for everybody else is straightforward: are you prepared to do the work now, or do you want one other decade of market knowledge to persuade you this neighborhood is price it?
As a result of we’ve got been price it the whole time. The receipts are proper there.
And in the event you’re a model that’s lastly able to cease guessing and begin really getting it, hello, I’m Marie, and that is actually what I do. Let’s speak: contact me right here.
