For the first time in its history, the Swoosh overtook the Three Stripes last year in terms of invoiced sales in the global sports apparel market, whose growth accelerated to 4.3 percent from 0.9 percent in 2013. Both companies, as well as the sports apparel market overall, benefited from the football World Cup. However, Nike Inc.'s strong 16.3 percent sales increase in apparel, with gains in both the U.S. and Europe, dwarfed the Adidas Group' 7.6 percent growth, which was partly affected by the slow European economy.
With a global market share of 11.7 percent, including Hurley, the Swoosh ended up 0.7 percentage points ahead of the Adidas Group. As their sales are partly inflated by a larger proportion of own retail revenues, Adidas and Reebok combined were probably competing neck and neck with the Nike group before, especially when the latter still owned Umbro. The gap will probably increase following the transfer of the juicy NBA contract from Adidas to Nike (see the following article).
As shown in our annual sports apparel chart on page 3, both groups gained market shares globally. They were followed by VF Corporation's Outdoor/Action Sports and Imagewear divisions, with a steady market share of 5.7 percent, VF overtook the Adidas Group in the U.S. Under Armour vaulted into fourth place globally with a 30 percent increase in turnover, remaining ahead of Adidas in the U.S. as the No. 3 player after VF.
Among the other major sports apparel vendors, Columbia Sportswear made a remarkable 21.9 percent jump last year, coming in sixth place after Gildan and ahead of Puma, thanks in part to the acquisition of Prana. In contrast, Patagonia went up by only 6.1 percent. We also note the strong progress of Amer Sports in the softgoods segment, which gave it the 25th spot in our apparel chart on the strength of Arc'teryx and Salomon. In the struggling action sports market, both Quiksilver and Billabong saw their sales plunge.
No major acquisitions took place in 2014, but we can expect some consolidation as the sports apparel remains much more fragmented than the athletic footwear market, where the top two players have a growing share of nearly 60 percent. Comparatively, 54.3 percent of the sports apparel market is occupied by 25 companies.
With an increase of 4.8 percent to $34.9 billion, the sports apparel market grew faster in the U.S. last year than in Europe, where it rose by an estimated 2.3 percent to $20.1 billion, in spite of the excitement around the World Cup. Driven by a recovery in China, the Asia-Pacific region posted a 6.7 percent increase to $14.8 billion. Sports apparel sales in the rest of the world inched up by 1.3 percent to $5.8 billion. More details on the regional sales breakout can by obtained through the SGI Market Facts report, which should become available shortly.
As in previous years, our figures are mostly wholesale revenues. They are expressed in U.S. dollars, converting the available data into the American currency at the average exchange rate calculated by the OECD for the year. This time, however, changes in foreign currencies had a minimal impact for the year as a whole.
