Belgian consumers buy a third of their clothes online, and the number of second-hand shoppers has quadrupled in two years. Since the pandemic, these trends have changed the fashion market permanently. This is what the budget management app Cake concluded. But who is the biggest fashion retailer?
Back to 2019 levels
The Belgian fashion market is gradually emerging from the 2020 slump—a time when the household budget spent on clothing was down by more than a fifth. The low point was the April 2020 lockdown, when only 14.5 per cent of Belgians purchased clothing. Fortunately, the 2021 summer sales returned to the levels of 2019, pre-Covid, and in the last third quarter, people even spent more on clothes. Not only did more people go out shopping, but they also spent more money.
Last year, compulsory store closures played a significant role: overall, a third of all fashion sales (36.7 per cent) went to Belgian retailers, but during the lockdowns, that was down to 22 per cent. This is according to data analysis by Cake, an app that lets consumers manage their budgets and offers cashback. For businesses, the app provides transactional data insights.
Local and yet online
Retailers with strong webshops had an advantage last year, also locally. As a result of the ‘buy local’ campaigns and a solid online presence, Torfs, a shoe retailer chain, in particular, doubled its market share (in the number of transactions) to 10.7 per cent in April 2020. Afterwards, it did decline again, but JBC also increased its market share to 9.3 per cent in the first lockdown.
Who are the biggest fashion retailers in Belgium these days in terms of turnover? Zalando, by far and away, stands out with a market share of over 20 per cent. The German company is followed up by JBC (7.5 per cent), C&A (7.3 per cent), AS Adventure (6.8 per cent) and H&M (6.6 per cent) – see the graph at the bottom of this article. Albeit that this top is rather Flemish: in Wallonia and Brussels, Zara (6.6 per cent) and Primark (5 per cent) take the positions of JBC and AS Adventure. It is also striking that Primark only has a 1.8 per cent market share in Flanders.
Second-hand: price, not environment
Second-hand sales take more and more market share. However, as these purchases are often between individual consumers (Facebook Marketplace or 2dehands.be) and in cash, it isn’t easy to have accurate data. The data available to Cake is just the tip of the iceberg.
The data shows that almost one Belgian in ten made at least one second-hand purchase in 2020, be it clothing or other items. In 2021, the increase was spectacular: the number of second-hand buyers almost doubled compared to 2019, and the trend continues. In fashion, that is mainly thanks to Vinted, accounting for a whopping 91.5 per cent of all (registered) transactions in Belgium. The second-hand market also relies on the younger generation: the younger they are, the more second-hand buying they do. For example, nearly 60 per cent are under the age of 40 and a quarter are even younger than 25.
The reasons for buying second-hand appears to be more about price than sustainability, as it is striking that second-hand shoppers also spend more on fast-fashion brands than other people. Cake did the maths: 4.4 per cent of Primark shoppers also buy from Vinted, and they do so for an average monthly amount greater (56 euros) than what they spend at Primark (53 euros). Primark thus loses 7.1 per cent of its turnover to second-hand, a similar percentage as H&M and Zara. In total, second-hand clothes take up to 2.5 per cent of the ten biggest fashion retailers’ turnover.
Stores are unreplaceable
Is e-commerce also a drain on sales? In the past year, 31 per cent of fashion sales came from online sales. There seems to be a sustained increase since the pandemic: still 10 per cent more e-commerce than at the end of 2019. Although Covid boosted online fashion spending, it did not make up for the losses caused by store closures: in April 2020, total market sales remained at barely 38 per cent of the 2019 figure. E-commerce can therefore not entirely replace stores, and “the lockdowns have made it clear that physical stores remain crucial for the fashion industry”, concludes Cake.
