PRINT THIS STORY:

CHANGE TEXT SIZE:

CACIQUE PUTS ON WEIGHT

LANE BRYANT WILL EXPAND ITS PLUS-SIZE LINGERIE CONCEPT TO 100 STORES BY FEBRUARY

By Maura K. Ammenheuser

Contemporary colors, elegant lighting, plenty of space, comfy seating for relaxing and chatting. Sounds like the lobby of a classy hotel. But it’s a fitting room. And not in some pricey salon, either, but at Cacique, Lane Bryant’s recently launched plus-size lingerie store. Last year Lane Bryant, one of three plus-size women’s apparel chains that Bensalem, Pa.-based Charming Shoppes owns, elevated Cacique (pronounced kah-seek) from a private label to a full-blown specialty shop of its own.

Since then, the company has opened 66 Cacique units, all of them built side-by-side with new or remodeled Lane Bryant stores. Charming Shoppes intends to have about 100 of these combined units operating by the end of its fiscal year, which ends in February, according to Gayle Coolick, Charming Shoppes’ director of investor relations.

So far these combo stores, which typically measure about 7,000 square feet, are on track to generate about $1.6 million to $1.8 million in annual sales, better than the $1.3 million to $1.4 million of the chain’s stores without a Cacique.

Coolick says Charming Shoppes decided to create the intimate-apparel boutique because roughly 25 percent of sales companywide came from this category, though it occupied only about 16 percent of the floor space. The company expanded the category at some places, and sales justified rolling out Cacique as its own shop.

Some are astonished that there are no other major plus-size intimate-apparel specialty chains in the U.S. “Lane Bryant is the only mall-based plus-size store,” said Dennis Gerdeman, a principal of Chute Gerdeman, the design firm that helped create Cacique. The sale of plus-size undergarments had never been done in a “respectful way,” Gerdeman says. “We wanted to change that.”

Countless media stories have detailed the bodyweight problems of Americans. There is little evidence to suggest that the overall population will get significantly more svelte anytime soon. Coolick and Gerdeman say 55 percent of American women wear a dress size 14, the smallest Lane Bryant carries, or larger. The largest is a 28. The largest bra size at Cacique is 48H.

Yet, even now, years after Victoria’s Secret transformed underwear shopping from something done in a dowdy back corner of a department store into a phenomenon — think rich decor, unabashedly sexy styles and iconic little pink shopping bags — plus-size women are mostly left out.

What does the Lane Bryant shopper seek? “She’s asking for a great-quality support garment, but our customer wants fashion,” Coolick said. “We’ve added fashion to great design.” Nearly all the merchandise at Cacique is under that private label.

“Plus-size lingerie is really only available in a department store, and with limited selection,” said Ann Schultz, marketing director at Pembroke Lakes Mall, Pembroke Pines, Fla., where the first combination Lane Bryant-Cacique store opened in the fall of 2005.

Many mom-and-pop shops do carry plus sizes but perhaps not carry the full range of such sizes, says Cyla Weiner, president of Sylene of Washington, a 30-year-old independent lingerie boutique. Indeed, Sylene stops at 46 for bras and 2X for lingerie, and even then, this is not its primary focus.

But even plus-size women want sexy garments, says Gerdeman. “So many of the women told us if they put on a certain piece of intimate apparel, it made them feel good,” he said. There is less to feel good about when it comes to actually shopping for the apparel, though, because these women find little by way of welcome, sources say.

“Many, many designers don’t want their brand associated with women who wear plus sizes,” said Coolick. Gerdeman agrees. “Victoria’s Secret doesn’t think it’s cool,” he said. “Their brand is being overtly sexy — petite, getting ready for Saturday night.”

Columbus, Ohio-based women’s apparel giant The Limited, owner of Victoria’s Secret, is uninterested in associating larger women with that image, at least for now, observers say. Limited formerly owned Lane Bryant, which acquired the Cacique label from Limited before Charming Shoppes bought Lane Bryant in 2001.

All of this seems to leaves the market wide open for Cacique. Chute Gerdeman’s research involved giving women spending money and sending them to Lane Bryant and two other clothing stores of their own choice. Interviewers later visited these shoppers, checked out their purchases and the rest of their wardrobe and asked about their style preferences and, more important, how they felt while shopping. Cacique’s design takes this into account.

The Lane Bryant and Cacique halves of these stores have separate entrances, exterior design and interior decor and, inside, are partly divided by a wall. They do share a fitting area and a cash wrap counter in the back of the store.

On the Cacique side the merchandise is organized into “themed vignettes,” as Schultz described it. The fixtures have subtle curves, a visual tribute to the customers’ own rounded figures. Plus-size mannequins show off fashionable, mid-price clothing.

But the coup de grâce is the fitting area, which is like a glamorous Hollywood dressing room, says Schultz. Women are far more likely to buy intimate apparel after trying it on, and hence the attention lavished on the fitting rooms, says Mindi Trank, director of brand strategy for Chute Gerdeman.

The rooms are larger than most, because the research shows that these women hate trying on clothes in confined spaces with little room for themselves, their purses, their shopping bags and often their children. The rooms are pleasantly and indirectly lit by flattering fixtures that flank trifold mirrors, allowing a full view without the harsh, ugly shadows produced by overhead fluorescents.

Cacique stocks the fitting rooms with water, because if shoppers feel hot and thirsty they are less likely to linger. A buzzer is within reach for summoning sales help.

Just outside the fitting rooms is a roomy, circular settee, a perfect way for husbands or friends to wait and offer opinions the choices of bras or camisoles. This sitting area is separated from the selling floor for privacy, and the bras are organized in drawers by size and style right there, so the customer does not have to get fully dressed to search the store for a different size. And plus-size women may be unlikely to relish the thought of having to shout out for a 40 triple-D, says Trank.

The designers did discuss Victoria’s Secret, Trank says. “Victoria’s Secret is a benchmark in history,” said Trank. “It would irresponsible for us not to look at them.” But Victoria’s Secret targets a different customer, so in the end it was not colors, fixtures or other specific Victoria’s Secret details that Chute Gerdeman sought for Cacique.

“The thing they do best is make the purchase feel much more than a commodity,” Trank said. “You’re buying an experience and not a commodity.”

At Pembroke Lake Mall, Lane Bryant was already posting steady single-digit monthly sales increases before it remodeled as a Lane Bryant-Cacique, Shultz says. The store, with the same square footage, has sales increases consistently in the double digits. “The store looks phenomenal, and their service is phenomenal,” she said. “It snowballed.”

The staff is trained for customer service. Clerks can measure a customer to help her find the right bra size, there is a greeter at the door, and employees are genuinely helpful, Shultz says. “That kind of customer service perhaps wasn’t available for plus-size women before,” she said.

Los Angeles development firm Samuels & Co. built Canyon Springs Marketplace North, in Riverside, Calif., which contains a 7,100-square-foot Lane Bryant-Cacique that opened in November. Rod Chisessi, the Samuels senior vice president says the format gives Samuels, essentially, two stores for the price of one — plus the Lane Bryant name, which is usually associated with big malls, inside a 183,000-square-foot open-air community center. “We call ourselves ‘lifestyle lite,’ ” Chisessi said. “It brings a whole new brand,” he said. It is unusual to find an intimate-apparel boutique in this type of center, he says.

“It’s an absolutely beautiful store,” Chisessi said. It brought out a broader selection of high-quality merchandise than other prospective plus-size tenants, he says. “It made our center look great.” Samuels has approached other retailers to encourage similar side-by-side shops for the center.

The Cacique staff “is groomed to make the curvy woman feel welcomed, respected and proud of her silhouette,” wrote Jennifer Pevoto, associate marketing manager of Tucson (Ariz.) Mall, where a Lane Bryant-Cacique opened in September, in an e-mail. “TVs show plus-size runway shows with very attractive curvy women and celebrate the whole connection.”

“Everybody wants to wear pretty undergarments,” Schultz said. But for plus-size fashion mavens, there is little else, she says. “Lane Bryant is the fashion leader in plus-size clothing. They’ve taken that niche … and given women something that didn’t exist before.”