According to reports, fashion sales are still unable to recover from the impact of the pandemic. According to Eurostat, the average European will spend €680 on clothing and footwear in 2021, up from €620 in 2020 but still well below the €750 in 2019.
In relative terms, the sector also continues to be a sluggish contributor to household budgets, with a 4.2% share, almost unchanged from the year of the pandemic and down from 4.6% in 2019. European consumers spent more than 305 billion euros on fashion last year, up 8.6 percent from 2020 but 9.8 percent less than before the outbreak. While all consumption categories showed positive trends in 2021 compared to 2020, some of the growth was not enough to compensate for the significant decline in 2020 due to the pandemic.
On the other hand, the country where households will spend the least on clothing and footwear in 2021 is France, at 3.2%; Hungary’s is 3.3 per cent and Spain’s is 3.4 per cent. Among other big European countries, German consumers spend 3.9 percent of their budget on clothing and footwear, compared with 5.4 percent in Italy.
Fashion is not the only category that has yet to resume pre-pandemic spending, in part because of restrictions that remained in place over the past year. Spending in restaurants and hotels was 27.6% below 2019 levels; Transportation, 12.3 percent below; Recreation and culture, 10.9% lower than in 2019, and, to a lesser extent, education, where spending was 1.5% lower than pre-pandemic figures. In contrast, categories such as audiovisual equipment, communications services, medical products or garden furniture have managed to withstand or even dominate the pandemic, while other categories, such as food, alcohol, household expenses or health, have also recovered their share of sales in 2021.
Post time: Nov-17-2022