Retailer Makes Short Fashionable
Men come in all shapes and sizes, but the same cannot be said about suits.
Manufacturers and designers rarely make suits in the size “extra short,” the fit required by men who are 5 feet 4 inches and shorter. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 6 percent of the male population in America wear extra short. Historically, few businesses have served this market.
Glendale, Calif.–based Jimmy Au’s For Men 5'8quot; and Under, which has dominated the Southern California market for shorter men’s sizes since the 1970s, has spent 2004 introducing the extra-short size to the world of fashion.
Alan Au—buyer, marketing director and son of founder Jimmy Au—made exclusive agreements with designer brands including DKNY, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Kenneth Cole to sell suits in the extra-short size in late 2003. Now, the Jimmy Au boutique on the second level of the Glendale Galleria is the only store in the United States offering designer suits in this often-ignored size.
Business jumped more than 20 percent since Jimmy Au started carrying the designer suits. The company’s sales from outside of California, mostly from men in the United States and Europe, shot up 40 percent. “Just the opportunity makes people shop,” Au said.
Jimmy Au previously sold suits tailored by the company or private-label brands.
The deal’s exclusivity will run out in January 2005, when the designers will be free to sell extra-short suits in stores across the country. But menswear analyst Jack Abelson, president of the Leawood, Kan.–based Jack Abelson & Associates, said he believes there is a good chance Jimmy Au will continue to take the lion’s share of this niche market. “If there is a tendency to carry anything out of the normal sizes, it’s taller and bigger, not shorter,” Abelson said.
Retailers such as San Francisco–based Rochester Big & Tall serve men who are 6 feet 4 inches and taller, even though such men make up only 3 percent of the population, according to the 2000 census. But no chain retailer serves short men.
Au said he believes that because short men have been ignored by fashion, they have a pentup demand for designer suits. Usually, short men buy suits sized for men 5 foot 8 inches and taller and alter the garments, often cutting the bottoms of jackets unnaturally short and cropping pants to the point where the knees look out of proportion, Au said.
A suit tailored for the smaller man has a shortened jacket and sleeves; lapels, buttons, a collar and pocket placement adjusted for size; and pants with a slimmer leg and thigh.
Alan Au persuaded his father to pursue designer suits in 2001. It took a while to convince designers that time and labor should be devoted to extra-short sizes. But once DKNY agreed to make extra-small suits in 2003, the others followed.
Au hopes to parlay the company’s success with selling and tailoring suits into manufacturing sportswear. Jimmy Au plans to introduce a line of sportswear for smaller men in 2005. —Andrew Asch
