Derrick Walker has parlayed a background studying engineering at MIT into a string of retail positions. He’s worked at Radioshack and Finish Line, consulted for Brooks Brothers and, most recently, served as head of marketing at LensCrafters. His focus in these roles has been largely on customer-relationship marketing and customer research, digging into enthographic and analytics.
Ad Age: Why are big-and-tall men underserved?
Mr. Walker: The women’s movement has been phenomenal in allowing people to have confidence regardless of their size. That hasn’t been the case as much with the male consumer, and I think there’s almost more of a negative stigma with being larger than there is for the female consumer. Look at the Dove [Real Women] campaign, or Lane Bryant stores — there’s a sense of pride in having curves. When you look at men, there’s not been anyone to define how you should feel in clothes regardless of your size. We want to offer with DXL a sense of rejuvenation, and a store that’s geared just for the bigger guy in terms of the types of selection we have of sizes and brands. It will give them a sense of pride.
Ad Age: What percentage of the U.S. population falls within your category of consumer? Are the trends pointing to an increase?
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Mr. Walker:We think that within the male population in the U.S age 20 and above, we have the ability to service 40% of those customers. That means they are over 6’3″ or over a 40-inch waist or both. The average waist size in the U.S. is around a 38-inch waist for males. Our target is really to go after the 42-to-46-inch-waist guy, as well as anyone who is larger. But we have larger penetration already with those above a 48-inch waist. As America gets larger, our challenge is that there are going to be more and more retailers going after the larger consumer. We have a decided advantage in the brick-and-mortar space, but online it becomes a matter of depth of assortment and breadth of assortment and not necessarily about price. Our goal is not to be the value player in the marketplace, so we have to rely on other key assets that we have, which is our products and the strength of our brand.
Ad Age: Does that mean DXL is changing the format of stores?
Mr. Walker:We’ve made our dressing rooms larger and we added seating around the store with an element of a concierge service, where [customers] can have clothes brought to them. Even the parking element is a factor. The reason we’re not in malls is that we want to make sure our stores are as accessible to consumers as possible so they can get in and out as quickly as possible.
Ad Age: Are there e-commerce or mobile opportunities?
Mr. Walker: One of the things we see is tremendous growth in the number of people hitting our website via mobile. We’re reshaping our website and making it less transactional. We’ve gone through some initiatives to clean up the site and make it more easy to navigate, and now we’ll go through an exercise to make sure it’s on-brand. We’re able to also offer virtual inventory inside the store.