I did follow the J.C. Penney thing -- we used to buy nearly all of Mr. Marvie's clothes at Penney's, because he's one of those few men who is tall and yet not big, so their catalog department was one of the only places we could find 30 x 36 (or 38) pants. The changes in cost happened contemporaneously with a change in stock, to no longer favor sizes in the tail end of the bell curve. It probably wasn't a driver in the sales disaster, which went down about 100% like the poster above called out, but it was an interesting change.