Shoe Shopping at Sikkim

Some time back, I was hunting for slippers in UK size 12 in a north-eastern city. I searched through several shops in two to three markets but could not find sizes beyond UK 10. For the uninitiated, I should mention that most brands work on certain common sizes, be it footwear or apparels. These are the sizes that sell the most and most brands cater mainly to these sizes. But for someone like me, who has always been over-sized in clothes and footwear, this poses a problem. Finding shoes has been a challenge since ninth standard – that’s when my feet moved beyond UK size 9.

Only high end brands like Nike or Skechers have my size, and even there it’s only available in select options and at select outlets. Being from Retail, I know the reason for it. Take for instance my slipper search – the north eastern population is generally smaller in size as compared to the rest of the country. So finding oversized anything is usually a problem there. When it comes to apparels, certain “plus size” brands have come up over the years to cater to people, and while that’s great, it still doesn’t solve my problem. You see I wear shirts sized between 44-46 & trousers sized between 36-38. These are the end of the spectrum in most brands and for plus size stores these are smaller than their smallest size.

Of course, many brands do have my sizes, but not even nearly in as many options as a smaller human would have to choose from. And the same situation gets worse in footwear. In my hometown Sambalpur, the number of shops that have slippers in my size can be counted on one finger. For that matter, even in North India, (Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida) where men are noticeably larger than the rest of the country, I usually have to scout several stores before I find something in my size. As someone who has worked in retail for nearly ten years, I have often come across customers who complain about brands discriminating with plump people. And as far as women’s clothing is concerned, I guess it is somewhat true.

You see, all the designers who started making clothes, especially wester wear for women, were trained in mannequin sizes and started designing clothes to those “standard” dimensions. Now the fact which has been dawning upon Indian brands in recent times is that “standard” is different in India against rest of the world. You may have come across brands that are adopting to bigger sized mannequins and mannequins with slight paunches in case of men to be more relatable to the Indian crowds. Women’s brands needed to do this more than men’s brands because men have not cared about available options as much as women have, historically.

If you ask a retail store manager the reason behind them not having a lot of options in bigger sizes, they will give you an over-simplified explanation like, “They don’t sell as much.” But the truth is that it’s because stores don’t order as much of these sizes. Here’s a table illustrating how different cities in India order stocks by size:

Store	Size 38	Size 40	Size 42	Size 44	Size 46
Chandigarh	1	2	2	1	1
Delhi	1	2	2	1	1
Mumbai	2	2	1	1
Kolkata	2	2	1	1
Guwahati	2	2	1
Hyderabad	1	2	2	1
Kochi	2	2	1	1
Ahmedabad	1	2	2	1
Bhubaneswar	2	2	1	1
Nagpur	2	2	1

 Notice that the distribution of bigger sizes is affected by size of the city as well as the geographical location. Northern cities might still have some availability in bigger sizes owing to abundance of taller men and bigger built, but even metro cities in east and west don’t keep bigger sizes. Here comes a question – Are there no bigger men in Nagpur? The answer is “Of course, there are.” It is just that brands might not care about them as much because they lack in numbers. Blocking inventory for the handful of people, especially where most brands work in 6-month cycles is not considered wise and I may agree with the brands on this one.

On a personal level though, it sucks. While the e-commerce platforms have provided solution to my slippers problem, the clothes situation is still not great. I work for Blackberrys Menswear and even though size 44 is available in my brand, my options get limited since the “slim fit” and the “trim fit” options are often too tight for me. We have been working on a new fit called the “India Slim” which is more suited to the Indian body structure but even there, the size becomes an issue. And if I am shopping in my own brand at Guwahati, I am sure they won’t have as many options as my store in Jaipur.

Women’s brands who sell Indian styles have circumvented this issue by leaving space for alterations but western wear brands are still battling with this. Petite women find way more options that women who have normal full bodies. The unorganised sector has kind of taken advantage of this and brands have been left playing catch-up. The high end brands like M&S & Zara have been playing around with colours and cuts to provide a better fashion solution to the majority of Indian women who walk out from these stores because of size and fit issues. Let’s hope they crack the code.

There are a lot of think tanks and marketing agencies employed by brands who come up with innovative solutions to these issues backed by research and at my last assignment with ITC, I had the fortune of sitting on several discussions with an agency which had provided us an insight into who our customer was. The research or rather survey delved into the socio-economic behaviour of the people buying clothes from any market. And it is fascinating when you look at these research from a commercial angle. Take the following example form my personal experience – I tried looking for boxer shorts in V-Mart, which is an economy segment large format store and the biggest size they had was 36, which is one size smaller than what I wear. Whereas Jockey, which is comparatively higher priced does carry my size. Similarly Nike and Skechers where shoes range from Rs. 5000 to Rs. 20000 have my sizes but smaller brands like Bata and Duke don’t.

Are these brands assuming that only the so called “affluent and rich” have bigger physical statures? Something to think about!