The consumption of sports shoes and apparel went up by 12 percent overall in the five major European markets during the first nine months of 2021, according to the authoritative European consumer panel of the NPD Group. Purchases of these products grew at a double-digit rate year-on-year in each of the five countries except in Germany, which registered a mid-single-digit increase. Spain showed the biggest growth.
As compared to the same period of 2019, the market rose by only about one percent in the five countries. It was flat in Germany and the U.K., and slightly higher in France and Spain. Italy was the only country where the market failed to recover its former level.
Footwear outpaced apparel as compared to 2020, as the two categories measured by NPD posted increases of 13 and 11 percent in the first nine months of 2021, respectively. As it had recorded a bigger decline than apparel in 2020, footwear basically returned to the levels it had reached in 2019.
Interesting shifts in the online space
Online purchases of sports shoes and clothing continued to gain ground in 2021, representing 44 percent of the market in the five countries compared with 40 percent in 2020. For the first nine months of 2021, they were up by 23 percent from the corresponding period of 2020, and 54 percent higher than in the first nine months of 2019. Conversely, sales at brick-and-mortar stores were up in the mid-single digits as compared to 2020, but still off by 21 percent as compared to 2019.
Interestingly, general pure players have been losing market share to sports specialists on the internet, although their sales of sports apparel and footwear in the first nine months of last year were 29 percent higher than in the comparable period of 2019. In the first nine months of 2021, the online sales operations of brick-and-mortar sports specialty retailers gained share over the pure players as well as the brands’ own e-commerce activities, which had been the winners on the web in 2020. Together, brick-and-mortar specialty retailers and the brands’ direct-to-consumer operations sold more products online than the pure players during the latest period.
Photo: Christain Liu, Unsplash
