ST. LOUIS – As the nation’s waistline continues to expand, so does the array of products and services designed to meet the needs of the overweight and obese.

Goliath Casket Inc. of Lynn, Ind., makes coffins that can accommodate corpses weighing half a ton. The site www.ampleanswers.com of Durham, N.C., sells products such as the Bottom Buddy, a toilet aid for people with reach problems.

It’s not a niche market.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that about a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese and that at least another third probably are overweight.

Bill Fabrey, who co-founded www.amplestuff.com in 1988, said society offers plenty of incentives to lose weight.

“No matter what we sell, there are still 100 reminders every day that (overweight people) don’t fit in, that there’s something wrong with them,” he said. “If they were able to do it, they would have done it.”

Purchasing explosion

Fabrey, who describes himself as obese, said people need to feel comfortable and good about themselves before they can start to lose weight.

With that in mind, his Web site sells products such as portable bidets and bath benches that can support 500 pounds. His catalog mailing list has about 100,000 addresses, of which 15,000 are repeat customers, but he said most orders are placed online.

The company has annual sales ranging from $250,000 to $500,000. He projects that the company will grow at a rate of 15 percent to 20 percent a year.

Amplestuff’s motto: “Make your world fit you.”

But former plus-size model Heather Benjamin worries such products enable obesity. “It doesn’t force a change.”

Benjamin, 33, said the Web site she co-founded, www.CurvyChick.com, is designed to encourage healthy eating and fitness for plus-size women.

So, when she accepted a cable-channel interview about the plus-size industry, she was shocked by the show’s promo: “Selling to the obese.”

“There is a line between catering to the full-figured market and selling to the obese,” she said in a phone interview.

She doesn’t want overweight people to become complacent because businesses allow them to stay within their comfort zone. For example, the Freedom Paradise Resort in Cancun, Mexico, bills itself as the first size-friendly resort. Among the amenities: Wider deck chairs and more easily accessible swimming pools.

“I can understand (wanting to hide) from a demoralizing society,” Benjamin said. “At the same time, you need to take charge of your life.”

Linzi Glass started online clothing company SizeAppeal nearly four years ago with her sister, who was frustrated by the lack of fashionable clothing in her size.

“Manufacturers refused to believe or embrace the truth that the average woman in the U.S. is in fact a size 12,” Glass wrote in an e-mailed response to questions. Her business and other retailers that cater to plus-size women are part of a “curvy revolution,” she said.

The result? Larger women are start to feel entitled to the same fashions modeled by skinny women in magazines.

Glass said her company, based in Santa Monica, Calif., has about 100,000 repeat customers, and yearly sales are in the six figures.

Small buiness affect



For many smaller retailers, the impetus to enter the plus-size business was emotional.

St. Louis entrepreneur Phyllis Librach started to sell dresses for special occasions online after her daughter couldn’t find a prom dress that fit.

Manufacturers have struggled with the complexities of designing dresses for larger women, whose shapes vary more than thinner women, she said.

Beyond that, Librach said, there’s a perception that larger girls and women don’t want to dress up. Only five of the 50 manufacturers she approached when starting the business thought plus-size women would want to dress up.

“Nobody believed girls over size 10 were going to prom,” said Librach, who offers dresses ranging from size 14 to 44 online through www.sydneyscloset.com. “We determined that the plus-size customer wasn’t waiting to lose weight to start living.”

That hunger for more choices is helping to drive the success of Torrid, a national chain with more than 50 stores that sells sexy plus-size clothes to young women and teenage girls. Torrid is a unit of Hot Topic Inc., a mall-based retailer that mainly caters to teens.

Positive feedback

While estimates about the plus-size apparel industry’s sales vary, New York-based marketresearch.com estimates that the industry will reach $47 billion in sales by next year.

If the dozens of letters and photographs Librach gets from satisfied customers are any indication, it’s a viable business. Sales for the first four months this year were equal to her total sales for 2003; she expects to sell about 1,500 dresses this year.

“Customers say if they didn’t get (their dress) from us or sew it themselves, they were going to stay home,” she said. “We give women permission to be glamorous at any size.”

A growing group of companies that offer all manner of products and services for the overweight to obese says everyone should be able to find products that fit them.

Kelly Bliss, a lifestyle coach for overweight people, started www.plussizeyellowpages.com because her clients were having problems finding exercise clothes in their size, bike seats that were big enough and even couches they could comfortably sit on. She said the online directory gets about 50,000 hits a month.

Not having a coffin large enough to hold your remains is perhaps the ultimate indignity, said Keith Davis, whose father founded Goliath Casket in 1985.

Davis said his company makes caskets ranging from 27- to 52-inches wide, slightly larger than the average pickup-truck bed. Goliath sells 600 to 800 caskets a year, he said.

Relatives shouldn’t have to bury a loved one in a pine box because they can’t find a large-enough casket, Davis said.

“Oversize caskets are unfortunate solutions to a disaster,” he said, “but at least they provide the families a sense of closure.”

Paul Campos, author of the recently published “The Obesity Myth,” said larger clothing and caskets are not making people fat. Companies that offer such products simply are answering a need.

“We’re creating a cultural hysteria (and) treating fat people like they are subhuman,” Campos said. “If two thirds of the population is overweight or obese … you’d think that’s a market somebody would be interested in.”