The number of weddings relative to the U.S. population is the lowest it’s been since World War I, and tuxedo-rental shops like Men’s Wearhouse are seeing a decrease in their business. They blame demographic patterns, changes in wedding fashion, and changes in the formalwear rental business as a whole for the decrease, and see the trend continuing for now.

The first problem is that the wedding rate is falling: fewer people (as a proportion of the population) are getting married every year. That’s bad enough news for the wedding industry, but add in a different trend: less formal weddings are now in style. The current Men’s Wearhouse CEO noted in a recent conference call that they’re selling more suits for weddings: grooms want less formal outfits that they might wear again instead of paying for a tux that won’t quite fit and that they have to give back.

There’s another trend that has traditional tux rental shops nervous: the Internet. Online tux shops offer lower prices, free two-way shipping, and can ship out a suit based on the wearer’s actual measurements. They rent accessories, too. If you’d rather invest in buying a tux, that’s more accessible than ever, too: you can order a tux from a reputable source for a lower price than ever.

Men’s Wearhouse is trying something new to make rentals more accessible: they’re putting mini tux-rental shops in 300 Macy’s stores as an experiment. Will making fittings and pickups more accessible increase business? If you see more mini-shops expanding out to other stores, you’ll know that it did.

The Rental Tux Is In Trouble [Bloomberg]

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