Chubby Americans our fastest-growing consumer segment

Forget the stereotypes: It’s not just people in low-income neighborhoods who are packing on the pounds at McDonald’s. Researchers at the University of Iowa have found that obesity rates are rising most rapidly among urbanites who earn $60,000 or more per year.

Heretofore, the main business response to this overwhelming demographic trend has been the $49 billion weight-loss industry. But now a much broader segment of corporate America has begun to see the nation’s fattening for what it is: a potentially powerful driver of consumer demand across a wide swath of the economy.

Just as baby boomers have driven business and shaped the economy during the past half century, the “plus-size” population is likely to dictate marketing trends through much of the 21st.

Already, greater girth is forcing American business to rethink — albeit carefully — the way it designs and sells everything from sofas and toilets to clothes.

The new Toyota Rav4 comes with seats up to 3 inches wider than prior models. Select Comfort, the high-end mattress maker, now sells a grand king size that’s 30 percent bigger than a traditional king.

Market research firm Mintel estimates that U.S. sales of women’s plus-size apparel jumped 50 percent during the past five years to nearly $32 billion. Dana Buchman, Tommy Hilfiger, and Ralph Lauren now make clothes to fit larger women, and even Jessica Simpson has slapped her name on a new brand of big-bottom jeans.

But it’s not just Fortune 500 companies getting in on the action. Small entrepreneurs are tapping into the big business — often for surprising reasons. Take Tim Barry: The 55-year-old management consultant had no intention of launching a company, much less building a million-dollar business. He was just frustrated.

Several years ago, as Barry boarded a plane in Boston bound for San Francisco, he heard flight attendants discussing how they would handle an especially sensitive problem with seating. At 6-foot-1 and 365 pounds, the stout Barry and several other heavyset passengers needed seatbelt extenders?standard equipment on most airplanes to accommodate larger customers.

Barry hunted around the Web, in catalogs and travel magazines, and even at private airports. No luck. There was, it seemed to Barry, a nationwide shortage of airline seatbelt extenders on the retail market.

Barry first contacted the manufacturers that supply the airlines. Soon thereafter he began mapping out plans to launch a retail site, called Extend-Its.com, from a small warehouse near his home outside Vancouver, Wash., to provide seatbelt extenders directly to the abundant numbers of people who need them. To date, Barry has shipped more than 10,000 belt extenders at $60 to $70 a pop.

The opportunities, in short, seem about as unlimited and surefire as these things get. “I just don’t see how I can lose,” Barry says. “If we know anything about medical history, once you get past a certain weight, you’re probably not going to lose it. You’ll be my customer for life.”