The Perilous Plus-Size Customer Journey: Podcast Ep. 2
Join host Kara Richardson Whitely to explore the complicated challenges faced by plus-size customers in the retail space. Drawing from personal experience, she emphasizes the complex trauma of weight stigma, highlighting its origins in workplaces, healthcare, and even personal environments. Kara outlines the struggles of people in larger bodies — from a lack of representation in stores to the challenges of online shopping, underscoring the importance for brands to challenge stereotypes, invest in body inclusivity, and do the internal work to rebuild trust and loyalty within the plus-size community.
For more insights, download the whitepaper, "The Rise of the Body Inclusive Economy," at thegorgeousagency.com.
Remember to like, subscribe, and share to contribute to this essential conversation, and see you next time on Gorgeous Corporate Bodies!
Links
The Gorgeous Agency Website
Connect with The Gorgeous Agency on Instagram
Connect with Kara Richardson Whitely on LinkedIn and Instagram
Credits
Music: AleXZavesa
Transcript
Welcome to Gorgeous Corporate Bodies, the podcast about embracing diversity, challenging stereotypes, and creating a workplace culture where every body is valued. I'm your host, Kara Richardson Whitely, and I share tools and advice for helping your business authentically connect with people in larger bodies, from DNI to sales and marketing and more.
Together, we turn this challenging topic into an easy to embrace journey that fosters growth on both individual and organizational levels. I'm the founder and CEO of The Gorgeous Agency, which helps brands connect with the plus size community using best practices and body inclusion. I've worked with brands such as Peloton, Google, Uber, Columbia and L.L.Bean, and I'm also the author of Gorge: My Journey of Kilimanjaro at 300 pounds.
Size inclusion is the key to welcoming and retaining talent and finding new segments to grow your business and also how to be great human beings to the majority of people on the planet. To continue the conversation and stay connected to the body inclusive economy, make sure to like and subscribe.
Today we'll be talking about the plus-size customer journey and why it's so challenging and complicated. This is the primary thing we do at The Gorgeous Agency, and it is helping brands not only understand weight, stigma and the importance of body inclusion, but it's truly about unlocking and understanding the customer journey so that their retail pathway isn't approached in the same way they would do a traditional marketing campaign.
As a plus-size consumer all my life, or at least all I can remember as far as I can remember shopping. I've been in the corner of Sears or the person thumbing through a catalog only to find out that they didn't have something in my size.
What retailers have to understand is there are so many things that have been schooled and ingrained in the extended size consumer that nothing is for us. And the primary thing that you have to understand with this market and with internal work, whether it's HR or DEI, is that weight stigma is complex trauma. That means that it is coming from everywhere and it is repeated and repeated and repeated,
What makes it such a tricky pathway for folks in larger bodies or fat folks however they identify and want to be called is that weight stigma about their bodies is coming from on high. That means from their bosses, from their health care providers, from strangers. It could even be coming from their own loving homes. So comments about their weight that they're not good enough, all sorts of little digs, microaggressions. But in the retail space, the void of imagery and the void of options is another way that weight stigma occurs and exists in this world.
I live very close to the Short Hills Mall. And then think about if I need something to wear, how few of the stores actually have something in stock. So if someone in my family died and I needed a new black shirt because my or black skirt because mine had a hole in it or, you know, got a stain on it or something, I'd have to order online. But what if the event is tomorrow? You know, it's just so challenging when you're thinking about anything that's last minute or if something goes awry with something you had been planning to wear. And also sometimes brands will say that they have plus sizes, so when you go online and you find something that you like and then you go to the actual store, even though they've touted of being an inclusive sizing champion, you get to the store and you're told immediately that you have to go online and order it anyway. And it's so embarrassing.
It is so absolutely just demoralizing to have money to spend, excitement to try something on, you've braved the store even though you've been turned back from store after store after store to show up and be turned away all over again. The other thing that is so complicated and one of the things that is so challenging with folks, relationships with retail is that you have to think about what that means if you're shopping online.
When I go to a store, what I really, really am going there for is to feel the fabric right. And also see how something feels on my body. Now folks in standard sizes might take, what, four, five, seven, ten items back to the dressing room and try something on. Now imagine. Imagine if you wanted to try on all those things but the clerk said, okay, great, give me your credit card. I'm just going to charge about $1,000 and then you can have the clothing in about 3 to 4 days. So you have the clothing in about 3 to 4 days, maybe a full week. And you get it on your body and it doesn't feel right. It feels weird. And the color is not quite what you thought it was. Well, now you've got to return it. If you want any of that money back, you've got to wait another week for it to be refunded. I mean, I just refunded something. It's not regarding clothing, but like, I've seriously waited. It's been a month for me to get this product that I want in the right size. It’s an iPhone case, but like, I mean, this is not this is not unusual where you're trying to get something for an event or something in your life. And this back and forth of like, you know, send it to me. Let me try it on. Let me send it back. I mean, I can't tell you the things that I've ended up donating because they simply sat in my closet because I didn't have time to get to the post office or my printer was broken, so I couldn't print out the label. And so this kind of exhaustive experience in the customer journey makes it so hard for folks to really engage in the retail space.
And that's why even though the numbers are there for a retailer, you know, 67% of us women are size 14 and above. The average size is 16. So plus size is actually average. It's not a niche. This is the way that women in our culture are and the clothes that they need. So a brand might look at those numbers and be like, this is the future of growth. Great. Make the sizes. A whole other conversation about how complicated sizing is and plus size bodies and how all over the map it is. I mean, I can be three different sizes in one store.
But the challenge that brands have is not understanding and truly investigating that retail space trauma. And how do you start to rebuild trust? How do you start to build loyalty? How do you start to bring a pathway back that shows that they'll be represented? That shows that they'll be safe in your store. That shows that your team has been trained. It shows that your communications team has taken an effort to learn, you know, the language and the tools and also that shows that you're invested in the plus size and extended size communities.
One of the reasons why influencer marketing is so popular and important with this community is because you want to see something in action. I often call out Power Plus Wellness. It's one of my favorite organizations or companies to follow on Instagram because they take a bunch of, they invite folks and larger bodies out to a class. They have a special private class and and they post about it online. And it's everything from kettlebells to water cycling and all these things that I never imagined were possible. But once I see someone else in action doing it, even as adventurous as I am, I mean, I've climbed Kilimanjaro three times. I'm a Pelo fan to the max, but it takes for someone else to show me something as possible for me to believe it to be true. For it to go from a role model to reality. And so when it comes to this customer journey and the work that brands need to do, you need to do a deep dive, you need to work with somebody who has lived experience.
And that's what The Gorgeous Agency does. It's so important that we take time, a pause to truly understand that work, deep work needs to be done to understand the market, to create a pathway, because otherwise this customer journey is perilous and you may not get to see the results that you want to.
If you do not do that work, if you do not take the time to truly understand, evolve your thinking, start to challenge narratives within your own mind and your organization's mind about the story of someone's body, assumptions about their lifestyle, assumptions about the things that they want to do, assumptions about the kinds of clothes that they want to wear, the the things that they want to buy. It's time to start challenging our own impressions about folks in larger bodies, but then also creating invitations and work to make sure that folks feel welcome in your brand.
It's so, so important, not only because the numbers are there, but because it makes your brand more friendly and it makes your brand more human.
And if your brand is resistant to making these kinds of changes, or showing these kinds of bodies because it's not your brand. Well, then there's an even deeper conversation to have. What's going on with weight stigma in your workplace, and how is it making your teammates feel?
Sometimes deeper work needs to happen at a company before you can move forward on that customer journey. That's why it's so important to work with folks who have lived experience and expertise in the area of extended sizes. And that's what we do with The Gorgeous Agency.
To learn more about that pathway and how we can help. You can visit TheGorgeousAgency.Com.
If this conversation resonated with you, make sure that you like and subscribe. And if you'd like to be a leader in your workplace in this conversation, make sure you share it with your colleagues.
One of the things you can do is download our whitepaper, The Rise of the Body Inclusive Economy, at TheGorgeousAgency.Com. You can find the link in the show notes. Thanks and we'll see you next time on Gorgeous Corporate Bodies.
