About Us, Our Clothing Collection, The Store and Jimmy Au

Jimmy Au's For Men 5'8" and Under, Inc. is the nation's leader and pioneer in the design and development of short men's clothing. Founded in 1961 as a custom suit business operating out of a trunk of a car in Hawaii, Jimmy Au's has now evolved into the largest short men's clothing stored in the nation. Jimmy Au's is the first and still the only designer clothing store exclusively for short men. Our 3200 square foot Beverly Hills store exclusively carries the largest selection of sizes for men up to 5'8" and under 5'5". We pride ourselves in treating our clients with dignity, understanding and respect as only a short men's specialty store like ours can. Our friendly, professional service and wardrobe consultation, along with our extensive clothing collection can make for a truly enjoyable and adventurous shopping experience.

Our customer service mission is to provide the best short men's clothing collection and the most enjoyable shopping experience we can by designing, developing and delivering proportioned clothing that looks, feels and fits great on men 5'8" and under with service, selection and styles that flatter a shorter man to ultimately make him a Client for Life and to create referral-worthy customer satisfaction.

Our clothes for shorter men are not an afterthought of the regular market but the purpose of its design and development. For example, designers regularly design with a 5'10" to 6'0" fit model. Naturally, for regular sizes. If their budget permits, big and tall versions are developed and even more rarely, small and short versions later. Some designers may only choose to manufacturer regular sizes only. Some might develop limited sizes only in long sizes. And the most rare are those who choose to develop short sizes. Anyway you look at it, short men are seen as a secondary market.

At Jimmy Au's, the short man comes first. In fact, the shorter man comes first. Typically, short sizes are developed for men 5'5" to 5'8". Mr. Au designs and develops his clothing collection starting with a 5'4" man in mind. For lack of a better term, extra short sizes for men 5'2" to 5'5". Extra short perhaps in relation to the rest of the population, but in Mr. Au's reality wouldn't that more realistically be called a "regular" size? After all, 5'4" is his starting point. You can almost say his short sizes for men 5'5" to 5'8" are really his "long" sizes. These symantics have already confused manufacturers, so we stick with the terms short and extra short sizes.

In 1971 the store was originally called Jimmy Au's Tailors and Fashions because the store carried both short and regular sizes. In 1975 the name later evolved to Jimmy Au's Small and Short: Tailors and Fashions when Mr. Au decided to carry short men's clothing exclusively. Here it stayed until 1982 when Mr. Au decided to shorten it to Jimmy Au's Small and Short. Tailors and fashion were pretty much implied. But then in 1995 Jimmy Au's son, Alan while at USC, was working on a marketing experiment in order to prove men didn't like the subjective or negative terms "small" and "short" and therefore deterred them from walking in the store. Alan changed the name of the store on all the eye-level signage in and out of the store to Jimmy Au's For Men 5'8" and Under to see if this would improve foot traffic into the store. Over the course of a one month study, foot traffic quadrupled. Needless to say, the name was permanently changed. The pragmatic nature of the name left no doubt who the store was for and the subjective nature of "small" and "short" was nowhere to be seen as a possible negative connotation.

Once in the store, the world of possibilities is almost overwhelming. We can proudly say there isn't anything "regular" about our store. Our store is divided into 3 sections... Tailored clothing, where you will find suits, sportcoats, tuxedoes, dress pants and overcoats; Sportswear, where you will find leather jackets, casual jackets, casual pants, premium denim jeans, camp shirts and sport shoes; Furnishings and knitwear, where you will find dress shirts, neckties, sport shirts, sweaters, cardigans, polos, mocks, belts, and dress shoes. The selection is so jaw-dropping you may not know where to begin.

the store is specifically designed with the shorter client in mind with lowered fixtures, shelves and racks along with lowered custom furniture for a more enjoyable and comfortable shopping experience. Even our mannequins are custom made to be only 5'8" to better display our collections. Worried about missing the game? Not in our store. Outfitted with two flatscreen TVs and a dual satellite dish, you can watch any combination of two games, news or other programming you want while you shop. Need to occupy the kids? We also carry a full block of children's programming, too.

The store features a full service tailor shop including the ability to alter leather jackets. Our wardrobe consultants and tailors have been with us over 20 years and understand your needs. We carry the largest range of sizes in the nation in tailored clothing and sportswear for short men. Sizes for suits and sportcoats begin at a 34 short/extra short and go all the way up to 50 short/extra short with odd sizes to 43. Short rise dress pants, jeans and casual pants begin at a 28 waist and go up to a 46 waist with odd sizes up to 35. Neck sizes on shirts begin at a 14 neck and go up to a 19 neck in 31/32/33 sleeves. Sportswear sizes begin at an extra small and go up to a double extra large (some triple) in short sizes. Lastly, we carry dress and sport shoes starting at a 5 D/E and go up to a size 8 D/E. Even dress socks in a true small or medium. We carry sizes exclusively for men under 5'5" and for men up to 5'8". No regular or long sizes here.

Although the test results rung true for men walking in the store and having positive reaction to advertisements, it doesn't on the internet because there are no search terms more logical than short men's clothes or clothing or any variation of that. So you will find these terms more prominently, but logically and tastefully done on our website in order increase our page relevancy for those truly searching for clothes.

In a normal bell curve, 2 standard deviations from the middle would constitute outside the norm. In the case of adult male population statistics in the U.S. that would mean those under 5'5" would be considered short and those over 6'3" would be considered tall. But in the men's clothing world, short men's clothing would mean for those under 5'8" (thus, our store name) and tall men's clothing would begin at 6'1". Just a little different.

Jimmy Au is the premier clothing designer for short men's clothing. Mr. Au has been an industry leader and pioneer in the short men's clothing business for the better part of the last 2 decades. Mr. Au's understanding of short men dates back to 1964 when he traveled from racetrack to racetrack fitting jockeys and other horsemen. In 1975 he opened his first store dedicated to short men's clothing. For the next 20 years, Mr. Au spends part of his career working with manufacturers to develop better fitting clothes for short men. Surprisingly, even with Mr. Au's extensive experience, some were reluctant to listen to him completely. While manufacturers were only willing to make slight improvements, Mr. Au in turn only received slight improvements in business. Mr. Au, however, took very good notes and kept good records of his custom clients dating back to 1961. The process became slow and unreliable. So Mr. Au developed all his own specifications for manufacturers to make his clothes rather than try to change what they currently had.

By 2002, Mr. Au began to see significant improvements in his design and customers were clamoring to get his clothes. Over the next several years, Mr. Au dedicates extra time into developing all forms of clothing for short men. He worked on suits, sportcoats, dress pants, dress shirts, sport shirts, casual pants, jeans, leather jackets, sweaters, knits, polo shirts, camp shirts... anything he could wrap his mind around that a shorter man would want, but in a proportion and fit that would make sense. In 2008, Jimmy Au launched his own line of clothing designed to his exact specification called Jimmy Au. The collection will continue to expand, but is already the only collection of its kind for short men. Jimmy Au is the most qualified man to design clothing for short men. Given the daily work environment he's in, he will have fit more short men in a year than most custom tailors might in a lifetime. Given his passion for making shorter men look great, no one is going to try harder to make you look and feel great in your clothes.

Coming soon