The share of clothing and footwear in the children's goods market is approximately 43%. The first trend that needs to be mentioned is a decrease in the birth rate. This is evidenced by a large number of experts and at the state level, various measures are being introduced to support families with newborn children, but the problem remains. This is mainly due to the fact that the number of women who are now entering the period of having children has decreased. According to the Ministry of Labor, over the past 10 years, the number of women aged 20-29 years has decreased by almost 40%. And it will gradually increase only after 2026. In the meantime, clothes for newborns are not in demand in the same quantity as it was 10 years ago.
The volume of the children's clothing market has not fallen, but it has significantly redistributed towards teenagers. Many shopping malls lack clothes for them, especially for boys.
This is facilitated not only by the increase in the number of teenagers, but also by the fact that in 2022 such inexpensive brands as Bershka, Pull& Bear and others left the Russian market. Their departure bared the market of popular and popular clothing for teenagers.
The next trend is a decrease in the purchasing power of the population. The trend is also long-term: since 2014, the real purchasing power of the population has been decreasing annually, and in a NielsenIQ study conducted at the end of 2022, it was noted that the consumer goods market experienced the most serious decline in consumption since the crisis of 2014-2015.
This trend has a serious impact on the children's clothing market, and although the phrase "they don't save on children" is often uttered, in practice this is not the case.
The choice of children's clothing has become more picky, mothers continue to look for safe and high-quality clothes, but at the same time price becomes one of the key factors of choice. In this case, marketplaces are very convenient, because you can easily sort products by the required characteristics and choose clothes at the lowest price.
The next trend affecting children's clothing is the growth of online commerce. Despite the fact that the clothing market itself is not growing, the growth of online commerce suggests that there is a significant redistribution between sales channels. Offline retail is becoming increasingly difficult to be effective.
In 2022, a number of retail chains for children's clothing declared bankruptcy, not to mention individual stores. At the same time, the growth of sales of children's clothing on the Wildberries online store continues. For the third year in a row, the marketplace says sales volumes have doubled, and the children's clothing category has increased its sales by 68%. Such rapid growth is both a challenge and a window of opportunity for the children's clothing market. The difficulty lies in the fact that there is no alternative to Wildberries as an online marketplace for selling children's clothing. The closest in terms of sales of children's clothing in the online channel for various brands is the Children's World marketplace, which also takes everyone to present and sell on its website. Detsky Mir rightly considers this direction promising and is actively developing it. According to Detsky Mir, the share of online sales in 2021 was 32% and will only continue to grow.
The situation for the sellers of the Wildberries marketplace is well represented by the reports of the Data Insight agency: about 40% of companies sell only on one site, and in 2022 there were many new ones that came from. Such dependence on one site is quite risky, but while other marketplaces, although they talk about the desire to increase the share of clothing in their portfolios, they cannot do this. Ozon, SberMegaMarket, Yandex Market do not yet have sales of the "Children's Clothing" category comparable to Wilbderries.
On the other hand, Wildberries are opportunities.
A small brand can sell its products all over Russia, and at the same time it is not necessary to build a complex distribution, keep its own sales department. For large brands, this is also a good opportunity to work in a growing sales channel, even having their own retail network. Brands such as Gloria Jeans and Tvoe occupy the leading positions in terms of orders with multibillion-dollar turnover per year only on the Wildberries site.
Some companies place bets on their own online stores. They are good because you can sell at retail prices through your own channel and work with loyal customers, but at the same time you need to constantly promote your site, creating traffic that becomes more expensive every year. When competing with marketplaces, your Internet sales channel needs big investments and constant development.
The global children's clothing market is actively developing: leading international analysts estimate the market growth at an average of 8.76% over the next five years. Many global brands are expanding their collections due to the children's assortment, of the recently joined ones, Michael Kors can be called.
