DATA Mapping the Fashion Industry

CO DATA:
Second-hand
Part Clothing
One: Market Size

FIGURE 1
Top 10 largest fashion retail markets by sales value, 2016 and 2017

$300 bn

$250 bn

2016

$200 bn 2017

$150 bn

01
CO DATA

Size of the Global $100 bn

40 Fashion Retail Market $50 bn

0
China USA Japan GermanyUnited Kingdom India Russia France Italy Brazil

The apparel market today is worth around
$1.34 trillion in retail sales globally per year.1
The fashion retail sector alone – just clothes,
not footwear or jewellery – is just a bit
bigger than the Russian economy, or roughly
equivalent to the combined GDP of the
world’s 126 poorest countries.2
Womenswear makes up more than half (53%)
of global retail spending – or roughly $689
billion. By comparison, spending on men’s
clothes and children’s clothes is relatively
modest – 31% or $403 billion and 16% or
$208 billion respectively.
Ten national markets dominate the fashion
retail sector and together account for around
69%, or about $905 billion, of total global
clothing retail spending (see Figure 1).
Despite this, these countries account for less
than half of the world’s total population.
The USA and China are by far the world’s
biggest markets for fashion retail. In
both value and volume the two countries
combined account for 42% of all spending
on clothes. That is more than all the other
top 10 countries combined spend on clothes.
Partly this is due to the purchasing power of
their consumers (the USA in particular), as
well as the sheer numbers of people buying Data source: Market research provider, Euromonitor International
garments (particularly in China).
These figures do not incorporate sales of
footwear or jewellery, (see The Size of the FIGURE 2
Footwear Market - section 5) and The Size Size of apparel, footwear and jewellery markets by retail sales, 2016 and predicted 2021
of the Jewellery Market - section 7), nor the
active second-hand clothing market (see $1.4 tr
Trade in Second-hand Clothing - section 4),
$1.3 tr
which is the main type of retail sales in many
2016 2021
developing country markets. If footwear and
jewellery were included, the global annual
retail sales would be around $2 trillion
per year – just a bit smaller than India’s
economy.3
By 2021, the global apparel retail market is
forecast to reach $1.4 trillion, an increase of
around $106 billion or 8.1% since 2016 (see
Figure 2).
However, the top 10 largest markets will $408bn
in general see only modest growth over $347bn $349bn
$307bn
that period. Their overall market share is
predicted to slip marginally to 68%.
Four key markets – France, Germany, Japan
and Italy – are all forecast to shrink by 2021.
India, by contrast is expected to enjoy a
relatively boisterous 5.2% average annual Apparel Footwear Jewellery
growth rate.
Data source: Market research provider, Euromonitor International
CO DATA: Mapping the Fashion Industry
Part One: Retail Market

In 2016, the top 10

fashion brands by
sales value accounted
for around 8% of
global apparel sales -
around $105 billion. 4

Footnotes:
1 Market research provider, Euromonitor International
2 Calculations based on World Bank GDP data available at data.worldbank.org
3 Calculations based on World Bank GDP data available at data.worldbank.org