Less room for plus sizes?

Mary Grant of Afton gets to the Mall of America only once or twice a year. There's not much selection nearer to home, she says, but even when she makes it to the megamall, finding clothes that are right for her fuller figure can be trying.

"Sometimes I want to throw up my hands," Grant said. "There's the same standard set of styles and the same standard set of colors. Sometimes it's discouraging to shop."

So while browsing the racks at Nordstrom's plus-size department, Grant was pleased to find more than just a "tiny little section" of clothes that suited her size and style. Retailers, she says, need to face the realities of the market.

"There's a lot of us fat ladies out there," she joked.

Yet some stores are set to make changes to plus-size collections in pursuit of a trimmer inventory. Ann Taylor and LOFT recently stopped selling size 16 clothing, opting to offer the size to online shoppers only. The stores now stock only sizes 0 to 14. A spokeswoman for Ann Taylor Retail, which owns both stores, said the decision was not a reaction to the economy or a move to cut costs but rather because of low demand for the size.

Some customers see the move as discriminatory and part of a trend.

Candace Corlett, president of the retail research firm WSL Strategic Research, said she has not heard such complaints but that in general, eliminating or reducing plus-size collections is foolish.

Dave Brennan, co-director of the Institute for Retailing Excellence in the Twin Cities, said that when clothing inventory is updated or reduced, plus sizes often are the first to go. Like petites, pluses are marginal sizes with lower demand.

"It's a common [inventory] technique," he said.

Plus-size shoppers generally find more variety in catalogs -- and more recently, online -- than in stores.

"In theory, everything would be more efficient if it were done that way," Brennan said. "Instead of, say, 500 stores, you have one location."

He added that centralizing operations allows a company to hold a lot less inventory and be more consistent overall.

"I can understand why they're doing this," she said of the reductions.

Junonia never has had a retail location because only a small percentage of women fit the company's niche. Kelly said her firm is doing well by using the Internet to appeal to more customers than it could with brick-and-mortar stores, and does 70 percent of its sales online.

Shopper Ashlee Moehring, who was browsing for blouses at LOFT's Mall of America store this week, noted that LOFT has a wide variety of clothing on its website.

"This store is good about having talls and other things like that online," she said. "It's a shame they can't have it in stores, but I understand why it has to be like that."

Yet despite the convenience of online shopping, Lois Audorff, who commutes from her home in Wisconsin to her job in Stillwater, pointed out that not all shoppers have Internet access.

In fact, most stores in the Twin Cities will continue to offer plus sizes as part of their normal inventory. They include Macy's, Sears and Nordstrom, three of the anchor stores in the Mall of America. (Bloomingdale's declined to comment.)

Meanwhile, some retailers have plans to expand their plus-size collections this summer and fall. Nordstrom spokesman John Bailey said the department store will launch a Kenneth Cole plus-size apparel line in December at its Mall of America location. Sydney Hofer of Kohl's said new Elle and Dana Buchman plus-size clothes will be in its stores in the fall. Forever 21, another Mall of America store, also recently launched a plus-size line called Faith 21.

Target spokeswoman Jana O'Leary said the Minneapolis-based retailer has already introduced a new line aimed at its "young contemporary" plus-size demographic in select stores. The line -- called Pure Energy -- should be in all Target stores by the end of July.

"We saw a need for the line," O'Leary said, "and so far it's been exceeding expectations."