Wife couldn’t find any good shirts for me in Dept stores for Father’s day. They were overstocked with “slim”. But none for me with a little paunch. As an IT consultant to retail and retail salesperson in the past, I suspect the following.
The software is written to replenish what was sold. Slim is the only style that sells so it is the only style that is re-ordered. This isn’t just in clothing.
Radio Shack is notorious for this. It will run out of 6 packs of batteries and hence sell more 2 packs and 12 packs. Thus it will never reorder what is out of stock.
It happens in healthcare and other areas. The software is written to depend on past history, even when that past history has been altered by that very software to be a distorted picture of reality.
I’ve noticed that our clothing sizes have been adapted for the “new Americans” (Hispanics and Asians). A “large” from 20 years ago is now “extra large”; I believe because of the macho culture clothing stores would never be able to sell a “medium” to a 5’3” Mexican...just tell him he’s “large/grande”.