Mainstreaming Men's Hosiery - V
by Geraden
Unless and until the declining trend of hosiery wearing by women is reversed, the hosiery industry will continue to be precarious. Mainstream hosiery companies fear that if they start marketing to men, much of their sales to women will be wiped out.
Those who make their money from hosiery still need the women buyers and wearers and will do NOTHING to alienate them. Women have been brainwashed with enough reasons not to wear tights: they are uncomfortable, unhealthy, unnecessary, unfashionable, expensive. The suggestion that they are worn largely by a bunch of (obviously pervy) men will simply be the last straw.
I put forward this point of view recently on the LAUF Forum, and I was very gratified to find that it had been endorsed by a major manufacturer of men's legwear.
Returning to the companies in the women's hosiery sector, even the online websites which are most relaxed about their male customers do little actively to promote male wearing: – the odd help page for men, and some advice on brands and sizes for the taller person are about the limit. And for businesses some of whom that reportedly get up to 80% or even 90% of their trade from men, they are remarkably coy about showing images of men wearing hosiery.
I owe much of the following line of thought to a friend of mine, who opened my eyes to the hidden forces that are at work in the hosiery industry. However the views here are my own.
The manufacturers and suppliers need to play down the fetish aspect of hosiery, and as a result they put pressure on retailers to keep their acts clean. This is not a matter of morality, but of business acumen. It may also sound like a conspiracy theory, but there is some evidence that points in that direction. I would however get into all sorts of trouble if I were to share it, so I must remain silent.
So then, we cannot expect any help from the mainstream companies, whether they are bricks and mortar or e-commerce. This is why it is unlikely (as was reported in a couple of Forums earlier this year) that Sainsbury's will start selling men's tights, however many e-mails they get in support of the idea.
There is another aspect of marketing to men: what it comes down to is: clean or not? The sites that I have mentioned – activskin, legwear4men are, without a shadow of a doubt, clean sites. They categorically distance themselves from pornography, fetish and the like. They do very well with a relatively small customer base.
There is of course a different kind of site that sells hosiery (and usually other things as well) to men. I am not going to name any of them – I am not interested in them enough to bookmark their names when I have stumbled across them. Their wares are usually of an inferior quality to those of the clean sites. I guess that their customer base may be larger, but – and here is the point – I believe that it is more saturated. The potential growth area is the clean area. But just as male hosiery advertising will damage the female customer base, so publicity for the fetish end of the market will damage the potential 'clean' customer base.
As I have said before, not all male hosiery wearers are friends of those who wish to mainstream male hosiery wearing.
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Geraden,
Hi Csanad
Hi Geraden, thanks for your answer and for the smooth correction.
Hi Csanad
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