Analysis of the market development prospects of the sportswear industry in 2020

Edited by Zhao Xinhua, Zhong Mengxia

For those people who have to work at home for a long period of time due to the pandemic, sportswear can be regarded as their good friends. During the pandemic, various sports brands actively deployed new marketing methods such as new retail and live e-commerce in order to reduce losses. At the same time, industry concentration continues to increase, and industry demand rebound is expected. In the medium and long term, the sportswear industry has received policy support for development, per capita expenditure and penetration rate are expected to continue to increase, and the scale of the industry is expected to continue to expand.

The market size continues to grow

According to Euromonitor statistics, from 2013 to 2019, the market scale of China’s sportswear industry continued to expand. In 2019, China’s sportswear market reached 133.6 billion yuan. In fact, a growing number of people start to pay more attention to proper diet and exercise before the outbreak. Now, health awareness is expected to increase further in post-pandemic, and industry demand may lead to a rebound. Since 2013, the concentration of the domestic sportswear market has increased significantly,with CR5 increasing by 24.3% to 72.7%. Compared with the international market, the domestic sportswear industry has a higher concentration and a greater degree of improvement.

There is still room for improvement in per capita spending

From a consumption point of view, according to Euromonitor statistics, from 2013 to 2019, China's per capita spending on sports shoes and clothing showed a fluctuating upward trend. Influenced by international trends, casual and sport dress are becoming more and more fashionable. It can be seen from the increasing number, for example, in 2019,China’s per capita spending on sportswear reached USD 32.43, which is about three times the per capita spending in 2007.

Compared with developed countries, the per capita spending on sportswear in China is only 2/3 of the global per capita spending, 1/4 of Japan, 1/5 of Germany, 1/6 of the United Kingdom, and 1/12 of the United States.There is huge room for growth in the future. Besides, it is expected that sales of sportswear will continue to grow with the increase of outdoor sports as the pandemic is stabilizing increasingly. According to the gap with the global average, the per capita annual consumption of sports shoes and clothing still has a gap of USD 12.3 from the global average. When it is expanded to the whole country, the Chinese sports shoes and clothing market still has room for growth of USD 17.22 billion.