At Universal Standard, Waldman and cofounder Polina Veksler are trying to carve out a new space entirely—one that does away with segregating “plus” and “straight.”
The founders bootstrapped the company from their savings at first, which Waldman says gave them a valuable degree of freedom. “It allowed us to make mistakes, allowed us to learn very quickly. It allowed us to do what perhaps was contrary to more seasoned advice.” Universal Standard’s first round of investment—$1.5 million led by Red Sea Ventures —gave it a short runway from which to start ramping up the business, after which they got to work raising their Series A.
“We wanted to work with people who we felt had our best interests at heart, who understood what we were trying to build, who understood that there was going to be trial and error for us. That primarily meant other entrepreneurs,” says Waldman. Not just any entrepreneurs, either: the $7 million round, which it closed in February 2018, was led by Imaginary, the venture capital firm founded by Net-A-Porter founder Natalie Massenet and investor Nick Brown, and joined by Red Sea Ventures, Gwyneth Paltrow, MatchesFashion’s Tom and Ruth Chapman, Toms’ Blake Mycoskie, SoulCycle’s Elizabeth Cutler, and Sweetgreen’s Jonathan Neman and Nicolas Jammet.
Elsewhere in the industry, though, Waldman says she still sees investors underestimating the potential of the space: “The biggest barrier to entry right now is the lack of knowledge and understanding on the investment side. I’ve heard of several people who were trying to move into the space being told, ‘Oh, it’s saturated now. There’s enough.’ Which is absolutely absurd. There is so much room for people who are trying to build brands with a broader spectrum of sizes.”
To combat this thinking, she says, more established brands need to keep expanding their size ranges to prove that the market is there to meet the supply—something Universal Standard is helping to do through its partnership with J.Crew (and another major brand to be announced soon, she says).
This, perhaps, could help close the gap between what’s offered to women who wear above a size 12 and those who wear a 12 or smaller. According to Liz Muñoz, CEO of the plus-size retail chain Torrid, there are about 62,000 freestanding specialty stores in the U.S. that cater to straight-size shoppers, compared to around 2,000 that sell plus sizes (600 of which are Torrid stores). Stores that carry both? It’s too new of a concept to even be on the map yet.
At the upper end of the market, the luxury online retailer 11 Honoré is throwing its weight (and venture capital) behind the effort to make broader size ranges the norm. In March 2018 the company, which serves sizes 10 to 24, secured $8 million in Series A financing led by Redpoint Ventures, bringing its total funding to $11.5 million.
Since then it has grown its designer roster to nearly 80 brands—among them Cushnie, Veda, and Tanya Taylor—and has pushed many of them to expand past “straight-adjacent sizes” (14 or 16), says Medha Agarwal, a principal at Redpoint Ventures. Doing so has required a financial commitment on both sides (on the brand’s, to produce the new sizes, and on the retailers’, to buy them), but the investments have been worth it, she says: Sizes 18 and 20 are now the top-selling sizes on the site.
As the market becomes bigger, Agarwal says, more brands will be persuaded to standardize their sizes and prices, so that plus-size shoppers don’t have to pay a premium, as they currently do with certain labels. And while most retailers vie for designer “exclusives,” 11 Honoré would be happy if more of the items the site carries weren’t bespoke, if only because that would make it possible to reorder fast-moving pieces partway through the season.
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