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Fashion industry market share: | 7 percent
Fashion industry market value: | 66 billion pounds

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General data

Employment

Currently around 555,000 people are employed in fashion, textiles and fashion retail in the United Kingdom. Most jobs in fashion related industries are in the retail sale of clothing. This sub industry employs 75 percent with 414,000 people working in the retail sale of clothing. Also the retail sale of footwear and leather goods provides a fair amount of jobs in fashion, about 11 percent, 59,000, employers work within this sector. Another 8 percent, 43,000 employers, work in the wholesale of clothing and footwear. With respectively 34,000 en 5,000 positions, 6 percent and 1 percent, the least amount of jobs are in the manufacturing of wearing apparel and the manufacturing of footwear.

Fashion companies

Top companies based on market capitalization

The biggest company in the UK based on its market capitalization is the Burberry Group plc. The luxury fashion company is valued over 10 billion dollar and had revenue of 3.8 billion dollar in 2017. Burberry sells its products through retail and wholesale channel, retail sales accounted for 77% of revenue compared to 22% from wholesale.

Fast-fashion retailer Next Plc is the second largest fashion company in the United Kingdom, based on its market value of 7.16 billion pounds. Next is mostly active in retail market in the UK, where it makes most of its 4.0 billion pound of annual sales. Only a small part, 2 percent, of Next's' revenue comes from international retail.

Retail giant Marks & Spencer is number 3 in the Top 10 largest fashion companies in the UK. It is currently valued over 7 billion pounds and has annual sales of 10.3 billion pounds. Whereas its UK food division is ever expanding, Marks and Spencer's fashion and UK general merchandise sales have been declining in the past years.The UK still accounts for 89 percent of the total sales, although its international presence is increasing, especially in food. Because of the declining fashion and general merchandise sale Marks and Spencer is facing a continuous downfall in market value.

With a market value of 6.2 billion dollar ASOS is fourth largest company in the UK and has annual sales of 1.8 billion pounds. The online fashion store sells over 850 brands as well as its own range of clothing and accessories. International retail sales for ASOS accounted for almost 63% of total retail sales.

Consumer expenditure

In million GBP

In percentage

Imports & Exports

Exports of clothing: 9.2 billion USD

Imports of clothing: 34.4 billion USD

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Currently around 555,000 people are employed in fashion, textiles and fashion retail in the United Kingdom. Most jobs in fashion related industries are in the retail sale of clothing. This sub industry employs 75 percent with 414,000 people working in the retail sale of clothing.

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Boohoo.com is a UK-based online fashion retailer, aimed at 16–30 year olds. The business was founded in 2006, and had sales in FY2018 of almost £580m. It specialises in own brand fashion clothing, with over 36,000 products.

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We are a global brand for all girls, we believe in affordable fashion for all. We are the number 1 destination for fashion and lifestyle for all the occasions in your life.

Our mission

We aim empower you to look and feel confident. To increase your self-esteem and body positivity to help you realise your true potential.

To use our social reach and platform to educate, empower and inspire our customers to drive purposeful positive change.

At boohoo we aim to use our reach to empower and inspire change.

Our campaign #BOOHOOFILTERFREE was created to reduce comparison culture and eradicate filter abuse. The campaign drove a global movement which united our customers in a message of positive self-worth.

Sustainability

#FORTHEFUTURE

OUR MISSION

We're on a journey to a more sustainable future. We know the problems. We're putting into action the solutions. We aim to educate and inspire change to reduce the impact of fashion.

Sustainability

#FORTHEFUTURE

OUR MISSION

We're on a journey to a more sustainable future. We know the problems. We're putting into action the solutions. We aim to educate and inspire change to reduce the impact of fashion.

At Boohoo we strive to put our community first, All 17million of you. We exist to empower and inspire you to be the best version of yourself. Our channels aim to support our cultural values and drive purposeful positive change. Join the movement.

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Commerce Cloud Storefront Reference Architecture

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Record levels of employment and rising disposable income have not been enough to raise the mood of the consumer as confidence has remained weak in the first half of 2019, as ongoing political and economic uncertainty around Brexit negotiations have dominated headlines.

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AI is likely to have a significant impact on the retail industry in several ways.

1. Personalisation: AI can be used to personalise the shopping experience for individual customers. For example, it can be used to recommend products to customers based on their browsing and purchase history, as well as their social media activity.

2. Predictive Analytics: AI can be used to analyse data from various sources (such as customer data, sales data, and social media data) to make predictions about customer behaviour and trends in the market. This can help retailers to make more informed decisions about what products to stock, how to price them, and how to market them.

3. Inventory Management: AI can be used to optimise the management of inventory. For example, it can be used to predict demand for products, track inventory levels in real-time, and automate reordering processes.

4. Automation of repetitive tasks: AI can help in automating repetitive, mundane tasks like price checking, stock checking and much more.

5. Chatbots: AI can be used to create chatbots that can answer customer questions, provide recommendations, and even complete transactions without the need for human assistance.

6. Image recognition: AI can be used for automated image recognition for products in online retail, which allows for easier product search and category browsing.

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Although we are facing economic headwinds, multiple tailwinds including Artificial Intelligence (AI), retail media, the transition to renewable energy and the return of demand for physical stores are laying new foundations from which retailers can grow their businesses in the year ahead.

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Trends in the External environment for the UK retail fashion market

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Trends in the External environment for the UK retail fashion market

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Consumer confidence stagnates

Record levels of discounting

Costs are rising

More store closures

Shift to online/mobile marketing/sales channels

Closure of physical stores

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Top ten online fashion retailers in the UK in terms of market share:

1. Debenhams.co.uk 12.1pc

2. next.co.uk 10.3pc

3. boohoo.com 5.54pc

4. missguided.co.uk 5.37pc

5. prettylittlething.com 4.30pc

6. newlook.com 3.92pc

7. asos.com 3.54pc

8. riverisland.com 3.35pc

9. amazon.co.uk 3.25pc

10. zara.com 3.15pc

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Driven, in part, by a near-unbeatable Google UK presence for womenswear and menswear-related searches, Debenhams.co.uk has managed to defend its position as the most popular website in Google UK for fashion retail over the Christmas period.

A report from search marketing specialists at Pi Datametrics revealed no new entries in the top five websites in the UK marketplace, with Debenhams sitting smart above long-time runner-up Next.

The analysis, which sets out to create a 'leaderboard' of search-strong brands, looks at more than 14,000 of the most popular queries relating to fashion (such as 'black dress' and 'men's jumper'), as well as the Google positions of some 40,000+ returning websites within the search engine's index to provide a definitive list of the websites consistently featuring in Google positions that typically attract more clicks from its searchers.

PrettyLittleThing fell two positions to settle in fifth by close of Q4, though its vacated spot was adopted by parent brand Boohoo. Womenswear brand Missguided.co.uk improved by one rank on the previous quarter to slot in at fourth overall.

Narrowly missing out of the top 10 were retailers houseoffraser.co.uk (11th) and marksandspencer.com (12th).

eBay saw the largest loss, falling from 12th to 16th overall. This dip in the last few weeks of the year is an annual trend for the world's online marketplace, though it is gradually fading from the forefront of shoppers' minds - and from Google's most clicked positions - as it struggles to remain relevant.

Close rival Amazon took 9th position at close of Q4 and received healthy search interest right up until the final week of December. Its fast delivery options and ever-growing range of new, on-trend clothing from brands typically sought for Christmas gifting makes Amazon an increasingly attractive option for clothes shoppers - and eBay comparatively less fashionable.

Debenhams retaining the strongest position in Google UK may come as a surprise to those aware of the recent management shake-up that came after its shares slumped 15pc in January, following a slide in sales in a period across the festive season.

But as Louise Linehan from Pi Datametrics explains, Debenhams' online assets will become increasingly important to the retailer in light of the news: "While times have been turbulent for Debenhams, the fashion retailer can remain confident that, for 14,000 of the most valuable product searches, it is the most visible player in the industry; an industry which is made up of 40,000 competitors.

The value of its online assets will become increasingly important, not just in light of recent news, but as more consumers and new audiences move online.

The next step for any retailer performing strongly in search should be to hone in on quick wins; for example, delving into the most valuable subcategories (i.e. Womenswer) and niches (i.e. Animal print) to find products which, with a slight push, could move into the conversion zone on page one of Google."

UK fashion websites leaderboard: share of voice in Google:

1. Debenhams.co.uk 12.1pc

2. next.co.uk 10.3pc

3. boohoo.com 5.54pc

4. missguided.co.uk 5.37pc

5. prettylittlething.com 4.30pc

6. newlook.com 3.92pc

7. asos.com 3.54pc

8. riverisland.com 3.35pc

9. amazon.co.uk 3.25pc

10. zara.com 3.15pc

11. House of Fraser 2.33pc

12. M&S 1.94pc

13. John Lewis 1.91pc

14. Sportsdirect.com 1.91pc

15. Asda 1.83pc

16. eBay 1.60pc

17. Wikipedia 1.15pc

18. Quiz 0.889pc

19. Matalan 0.842pc

20. Zalando 0.71pc

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Which fashion retailer website was the most popular in Google UK last year?

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Driven, in part, by a near-unbeatable Google UK presence for womenswear and menswear-related searches, Debenhams.co.uk has managed to defend its position as the most popular website in Google UK for fashion retail over the Christmas period.

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Political factors

-       The UK is a mature and developed market, thus offering  ease of doing business in terms of setting up and expanding its production and operations in the UK (Nugent, 2017).

-       However, the political uncertainty over Brexit may negatively affect  operations, possibly ending free trade between the UK and the EU and making it more difficult  to make investment and operational decisions that may be affected by Brexit (Collins, 2017).

Economical Factors

-       Brexit introduces economic uncertainty for the UK. This creates a negative economic climate and market environment in the form of an increase in inflation and lower wages for Toyota (Giles, 2017).

Social and environmental Factors

·      Growing consumer awareness and attention on businesses’ social and environmental performance

More and more consumers are now becoming aware of and attaching great importance to businesses’ social performance when choosing brands. In a survey by Accenture, 42% of consumers suggest that they will reject brands failing to address social and environmental issues (Gonçalves, 2018).

Technological analysis

·      Growth of social media as an important marketing channel

The development of web 2.0 technologies has led to the significant growth social media as an important marketing channel for retail brands such as Boohoo, allowing brands to directly connect and interact with consumers (Schmid, 2018).

·      Adoption of innovative technology by retail fashion brands

Retail fashion brands such as Lacoste are adopting innovative technologies such as showrooms equipped with augmented reality (AR) to improve the retail shopping experience for consumers and a survey has shown that 61% of consumers would prefer retail stores offering AR showrooms (Sheehan, 2018).

Legal analysis

·      Development of data privacy laws

As electronic marketing becomes more and more important for retail brands, there is an increasing emphasis on protecting consumers’ privacy (Deloitte Insights, 2017). Development of data privacy laws such as the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) in the EU has created significant legal challenge for retail businesses like Boohoo to ensure that consumer data is collected and used by businesses in an ethical way with full consent (MacDonald, 2019).