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The 30 Largest US Cities With Almost No Plus Size Stores, 2026
The average American woman wears a size 16–18 — and yet 30 US cities of 100,000+ people have at most one dedicated plus size clothing store, 10 of them with none at all. That's 5.0 million people whose best option is a drive to the next town or a gamble on shipping. If you've ever thought about opening a plus size boutique, this table is your market map.
The list, largest city first
Anaheim, California tops it: 345,000 residents, a single dedicated plus size store in our directory. These are city-proper counts — many of these cities sit inside metros with stores a suburb away — but a city this size supporting its own store is exactly how the winners on our best-cities list got there.
| # | City | Population | Plus size stores |
| 1 | Anaheim, CA | 344,561 | 1 |
| 2 | Santa Ana, CA | 316,184 | 0 |
| 3 | Fremont, CA | 228,192 | 1 |
| 4 | Des Moines, IA | 213,096 | 1 |
| 5 | Yonkers, NY | 211,040 | 1 |
| 6 | Oxnard, CA | 200,616 | 1 |
| 7 | Cary, NC | 182,659 | 1 |
| 8 | Garden Grove, CA | 172,361 | 0 |
| 9 | Oceanside, CA | 170,941 | 1 |
| 10 | Surprise, AZ | 167,564 | 1 |
| 11 | Palmdale, CA | 162,536 | 1 |
| 12 | Salinas, CA | 160,783 | 0 |
| 13 | Sunnyvale, CA | 156,792 | 0 |
| 14 | Bridgeport, CT | 151,599 | 0 |
| 15 | Olathe, KS | 149,035 | 1 |
| 16 | Pomona, CA | 147,966 | 0 |
| 17 | Thornton, CO | 146,689 | 1 |
| 18 | Miramar, FL | 143,242 | 1 |
| 19 | Palm Bay, FL | 142,023 | 1 |
| 20 | Coral Springs, FL | 140,808 | 1 |
| 21 | Victorville, CA | 140,721 | 1 |
| 22 | Orange, CA | 137,941 | 1 |
| 23 | New Haven, CT | 137,562 | 1 |
| 24 | Kent, WA | 136,588 | 0 |
| 25 | Santa Clara, CA | 133,132 | 0 |
| 26 | Simi Valley, CA | 125,778 | 0 |
| 27 | Vallejo, CA | 123,475 | 1 |
| 28 | Fairfield, CA | 122,646 | 0 |
| 29 | Berkeley, CA | 121,749 | 1 |
| 30 | Cambridge, MA | 121,186 | 1 |
Why this gap exists — and why it's an opportunity
Plus size retail clusters hard: chains follow malls, boutiques follow foot traffic, and whole big cities fall through the cracks — especially fast-growing suburbs that added 50,000 residents faster than retail could follow. Meanwhile the demand side isn't niche; it's the majority of American women. For an entrepreneur, a 150,000-person city with zero dedicated stores and a proven national demand curve is about as clean as a retail thesis gets. (Our state-by-state store data and the chain league table make good companion reading.)
Cite this data
Free to use with attribution (CC BY 4.0). Suggested line: "Source: PlusSizeNearby.com underserved-cities analysis (2026)" linked to this page.