Market Overview

The domestic apparel retail market (including men’s, women’s, baby's and children's apparel) reached 8,501 billion yen in 2024, equivalent to101.7% of the previous year's level. While the pace of growth moderated, the market continued its upward trajectory for the fourth consecutive year, indicating a sustained recovery trend. Consequently, the market size recovered to 93% of its pre-pandemic level in 2019.

Noteworthy Topics

2024 Apparel Industry Trend by Sales Channel

In view of the 2024 apparel retailing market by sales channel, department stores and specialty stores continued to perform well. In particular, department store sales benefited significantly from inbound tourism demand, which served as a key driver of growth.
Ecommerce, meanwhile, maintained stable demand following the sharp surge expansion observed during the pandemic period (2020-2021). Supported by apparel companies’ OMO (Online-Merge-Offline) strategies, which enabled the convergence of online and offline customer bases, ecommerce has become an established purchasing channel.

Future Outlook

Going forward, the size of the domestic apparel retail market is projected to sustain moderate growth through 2030.
While structural factors including a declining birth rate, population aging, and an overall population decrease are projected to exert downward pressure on the overall apparel market, rising costs for raw materials, logistics, and labor are likely to continue pushing up product prices, mitigating the impact of unit sales and limiting the overall contraction of market value.

Research Outline