Men’s big and tall clothing retailer Casual Male recently announced a new concept store: Destination XL. The parent company, Casual Male Retail Group, believes that this new format, which combines the products of both of its sub-brands, Casual Male XL and Rochester Big & Tall, will give bigger guys – like myself – an actual place to find clothes they like.

So far, Wall Street seems to like the idea (Elizabeth Pierce at Roth Capital called DXL a “game changer “, and several of Stifel Nicolaus’ analysts have given the company’s Nasdaq-traded stock a buy rating), mainly because the market for big guys’ clothing ($6 billion) is currently scattered among the racks of department store hide-and-seek.

The idea of a single place where men can find clothes that not only fit, but are clothes they would actually want to wear – and I can speak from experience – is long overdue. David Levin, Casual Male Retail’s CEO, seems to understand exactly what the problem has been for years:

“A guy who is a 42 or a 44, he’s not that big, ” Levin said. “But he is what we call an end-of-the-rack shopper because in stores, once you get into that size 40, the selection goes down dramatically, ” he said. “It is a major initiative for us to attract that guy who is caught in the middle. “

The new stores will be a much larger format (jumping from 3,500 square feet to about 9,000 square feet), and will feature a good-better-best strategy, hoping to appeal to guys looking for value in CM’s private label products, all the way up to guys looking for luxury clothing from such brands as Michael Kors and Ermenegildo Zegna. The company currently operates 419 stores, and 17 have so far been converted to the new DXL format.

If you can’t tell yet, I’m kind of excited about the idea, too. At 6’3 ” (and the runt of the litter, to boot – my poor brother Chris is 6’7 “) it’s kind of odd that I’ve never even set foot in a Casual Male store. First off, the name has somehow always altered my perception of what’s in store. I like my clothes to fit, and typically a “casual ” or “relaxed ” fit equals a frumpy fit. And I think my mindset has always been that I don’t need “big guy clothes, ” which often means having to settle for lots of plaid flannel and baggy corduroy pants. What I’ve always wanted is fashionable clothes that just happen to be big. And ask any guy over 6’2 ” – that’s just not easy to find. A lot of us are walking around with cuffs that are just a little too short.

So for me, here in Boston, ever since the death of Filene’s Basement, where the traditionally odd sizes that didn’t sell well in department stores found their way onto discount racks (translate: a great place to shop for anyone who didn’t fit the “typical ” body type), I’ve been forced to go upmarket and shop at the types of stores I wouldn’t dare tell my mother I’m shopping in, only because there’s a better chance they’ll have my size. And it’s not just that I don’t want to hear her say, “You paid $150 for a dress shirt?!?! ” It’s because when I do pay that much, I’m ashamed of myself for having done it. Because it’s been my experience that unless you are vigilant about buying custom-tailored or domestically-sourced clothing brands, the $150 shirt you buy at a premium retail location will still have the same tag as the shirt sold at discount stores: the one assures you it was made in the Far-East by workers whose human rights were being violated every penny-pinching stitch of the way. To me at least, It doesn’t feel like higher quality – it just feels like getting ripped off because you require longer sleeves.

So with its new store format and good-better-best concept, maybe I’ll take a trip over to DXL. Apart from the few mentioned in the press release, I don’t even know what other brands they carry, but from the sounds of the re-branding announcement, who knows, maybe there’s some fashionable stuff in there – even better if it’s any of the brands I like that make their stuff here or in Canada. Because for as long as I remain an oddly-sized human, shopping for clothes online is never going to be an option. And I know there’s a bunch of us big guys out there in the exact same boat. I can’t yet say if Casual Male has done it yet, but sooner or later, some store-based retailer is bound to get it right. And whoever does will enjoy a significant reward from the market.