The growth of the market softened from the rates of 8.1 percent and 2.6 percent recorded in 2011 and 2012, respectively, according to the annual study of the sports apparel sector conducted by Sporting Goods Intelligence. The major sporting goods companies raised their apparel revenues by only 1.8 percent to about $73.7 billion at the wholesale level in terms of U.S. dollars last year. They grew by 5.6 percent in the U.S. to $34.0 billion, but declined by 1.1 percent to $39.7 billion in the rest of the world.
In Europe, the sell-in of sports apparel increased by 0.7 percent to $19.5 billion in terms of dollars, but it fell in terms of local currencies, taking into account the fact that the euro appreciated by 3.3 percent against the dollar. Sales fell by 2.7 percent to $14.4 billion in the Asia-Pacific region, due in part to the devaluation of the Japanese yen and the remaining inventory overhang in China. They went down by 3.1 percent to $5.7 billion in Latin America and other markets around the world.
The chart on page 3 of this issue, which lists the apparel sales of the major sports companies and brands in the U.S. and the rest of the world, shows that the Adidas Group continued to lead the market for sports apparel, but Nike narrowed the gap with the Three Stripes to only 0.1 percentage points from one full percentage point in the previous year. The Adidas Group had 10.5 percent of the global sports apparel market versus 10.4 percent for the Swoosh, although it was still way ahead of Nike outside the U.S. market.
VF Corporation remained comfortably in the third position. Like Under Armour and Fila, it grew by more than 30 percent in 2013, contributing to the overall growth of the U.S. sports apparel market. Lululemon didn’t participate in the process last year in the same measure as it had done before. The 18 percent decline in the value of the Japanese yen against the dollar depressed the sales of big local players such as Descente and Mizuno.
There are several explanations for the softening growth of the sports apparel market, in our opinion. The incursions of low-priced vertical fashion retailers like H&M, Zara and Uniqlo into the sports lifestyle market are confusing customers about the distinction between sports and leisure apparel and negatively affecting the more expensive, authentic sports brands, as Quiksilver pointed out a few days ago (see the next article in this issue). On top of that, in the past year, unseasonable weather conditions had a negative effect on retailers’ orders of performance apparel in many countries, and the lack of a sports mega-event depressed sales of fan clothing by Adidas and other major players.
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