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The UK High Street fashion industry is worth an estimated £ 44.5 billion. In 1960, 10% of household expenditure was spent on clothing and footwear. Today, thanks to the discount rate, lower production costs abroad and a flood of Chinese imports, only 6% of household expenditure is spent on keeping us fashionable. Encouragingly for the consumer, between 2001 and 2005 average clothing and footwear decreased by 14.4% while cost of living has risen by 12.6%.
discounting is rife in the ultra-competitive UK fashion market. Marks & Spencer is a leader in the sale of high street fashion, but faces fierce competition from discount fashion specialists such as Primark and TK Maxx. Increasingly, affluent younger consumers are buying formerly exclusive high fashion brands such as; Prada (Italy), Chloe (France), Hugo Boss (Germany), Burberry (UK) and Donna Karan (US) to name a few.
The rise of cheap imports has nearly wiped out UK manufacturing. These days UK manufacturing concentrates on specialist fashion clothing or luxury products, mostly made for wealthy consumers in other developed countries. A continued trend in the fashion industry is the integration of manufacturers and retailers. The top three fashion retailers in the UK; Next, Marks & Spencer and Arcadia (Topshop, Dorothy Perkins, BHS etc.), all output and store their own fashion brand. Exceptions to this vertical integration, street fashion brands of Nike, Adidas and Reebok, who prefer specialist retailers.
Finally, the UK fashion market will continue to be driven by retailers rather than manufacturers with a polarization between discounters and full-price retailers. The full-price retailers will take advantage of the young consumer demand for couture-house design, quality materials and individual styles sold as “fast fashion” with points available for a limited time before new styles are released. Forecasts for 2010 are for women, girls and infants fashion market to grow by 23%, with 15.6% growth in the fashion market men and boys.
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