Global digital fashion sales rallied in December, as retailers closed out 2022 Peak Trading and Holiday campaigns with strong performances despite economic headwinds and rising price-sensitivity among shoppers, according to True Fit, the leading data-driven platform that decodes fit and size for leading apparel and footwear retailers.
Data from True Fit’s Fashion Genome, the world’s largest connected data set for fashion, which analyzes insights from 17,000 retail brands and data from 80 million active members, showed that while traffic to online retailers sites during the Holiday season dipped, -9% down on 2021 levels as shoppers returned to stores, online checkouts in December rallied.
Order volumes for online fashion in December globally rose +12% compared to 2021, according to True Fit data, helped by Holiday discounting and extended sales periods increasing demand among price-sensitive shoppers. And, as order volumes surged, the demand for fit guidance also increased, with True Fit registrations up +30% year-on-year in December.
Separate data from BDO showed that, despite pre-Christmas warnings and downbeat forecasts for festive trading amid the rising cost-of-living crisis, retailers saw omnichannel sales across both brick-and-mortar and ecommerce rise by +9.8% in December compared to last year. It said fashion continued to be one of the highest performing sectors for discretionary spend, with omnichannel apparel sales up +16% last month versus 2021. Meanwhile, insights from Wunderkind pointed to a post-Christmas online surge, reporting online sales in the last week of December rose +26% year-on-year.
William R. Adler, CEO True Fit, noted: “We saw most retailers in the Fashion Genome stabilize in 2022 from the Covid-related swings of 2020-2021. In 2023 we expect leaders that prioritize building long term customer relationships will navigate the macro and be well positioned to capture growth as the fashion accelerates toward $1Tr online by 2025.”
True Fit’s data showed that fashion orders from online multi-brand retailers significantly outpaced orders from Direct To Consumer (DTC) brands, with digital department stores taking 50% more orders than their DTC rivals during the Holiday trading period. This, True Fit suggests, could also be linked to consumers trying to cut down on discretionary spending, choosing to place multiple orders via one online retailer in a bid to incur only one delivery fee, rather than having to pay separate fulfillment charges for individual orders placed with multiple retailers, as well as the increased levels of credit offered by multi brand retailers compared to brands.
