Jewish World Review August 17, 2005 / 12 Av, 5765

In a big country, dreams stay with you

By Jerry Large

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | These days Timothy Barry is living off the fat of the land, taking advantage of a huge market niche that has been overlooked by other business people.

Barry sells products that make life easier for people who tip the scales at more than, say, 300 pounds.

He has lots of potential customers; obesity is a national burden not likely to be lightened soon. Every year or so a supposed new solution arises, only to fall short. Millions latched onto the Atkins diet (lose weight by eating steak and bacon; no bread or cake), but not many could keep it up. Atkins Nutritionals filed for bankruptcy protection a few weeks ago.

But while other folks bemoan America's girth-growth, Barry is making a living from it.

He knows a lot about what heavy people need. Barry himself would break an ordinary scale. The kind you find at most stores can't handle more than 300 pounds and Barry weighs 360.

He runs a Web business, SuperSizeWorld.com, out of Vancouver, Wash., selling nearly 300 products for really large people.

They sell sturdy scales, of course, and step-stools that can handle 1,000 pounds, along with extra-big towels, toenail clippers with long handles and a magnifying glass so that a person with certain obstructions can see the trimmed nails.

I asked Barry about the business and he told me he isn't a fat activist, just a businessman who thinks being weighty shouldn't have to be so inconvenient.

I know something of what he's talking about. If I'd only been an inch taller I'd have a lot easier time buying clothes. My two brothers are left-handed, which reduces their choices for some things. Women with hips or anyone who doesn't fit the mid-range mold in a standardized world knows a bit of what he feels.

Barry has always been a big guy. He's 6-foot-1 and he was a competitive power-lifter when he was younger. But he says that as he got older he acquired heft in more and more places, none of which had to do with weightlifting.

For a number of years he was the president of a Web development company that had offices in eight states, so he flew a lot.

He says he got bigger as seats got smaller, so half the time he needed a seat-belt extender to strap himself in. Sometimes, he says, flight attendants would rudely drop the extender in his lap, or he'd be embarrassed when they'd say over the speaker system that the passenger in 14F needed an extender.

Once he was flying out of Boston and there happened to be several other large people on the plane. There weren't enough extenders, so the flight was held until the crew could borrow more from another aircraft.

"Right then, I made up my mind: I would carry my own."

He checked the Internet, but no one sold seat-belt extenders. He checked with the FAA and they said there was no rule against a passenger bringing his own, so Barry hooked up with the manufacturer and put up a Web site, called Extend-it.com, which immediately drew customers. He's sold thousands of extenders.

That was three years ago. His Web development company was still hurting from the burst Internet bubble and just as Barry was thinking there might be some opportunity in making life more comfortable and convenient for big people, downsizing pushed him out, giving him incentive to make his ideas concrete.

He started selling heavy-duty scales, and then he went on a cruise and got another idea. Cruises have lifeboat drills the first day out but they couldn't find a life vest to fit Barry.

This April he went all the way, with SuperSizeWorld.com, which carries tons of stuff an average-size person wouldn't think of.

There is a shower massager for cleaning hard to reach areas, and huge hangers for big clothes, which are not only too large for most hangers, but too heavy from many of them. One, called Hangerzilla, claims to handle up to 100 pounds. There's even a giant toilet seat.

Barry says he buys lots of his merchandise from mainstream companies that make products for big people, but have a hard time persuading stores to carry them. It's stuff people have always had to special order.

Other products are made by small niche producers eager for an outlet. And there's the world's longest watch band, which Barry thought up and found a company in Hong Kong to make for him. Business has been brisk, he says, customers from all over, but especially the Southeastern part of the country. Can anyone say fried chicken and gravy? Barry's native Northwest lags behind the rest of the country, except for life jackets. There's lots of water around here.

"You can't swing a dead cow without hitting a story about how we're all getting fatter," he says. "They're all focused on losing weight." In the meantime, there's no reason for a big person to be uncomfortable.

Barry's an entrepreneur who knows which side his bread is buttered on.