The Apparel category in the US boasts some of the most recognizable shopping brands in America. Entire malls have been built around these stores as they have dominated brick-and mortar retailing for decades.
In 2017, though, they each live in the shadow of two companies that are not referenced anywhere else in this report – Amazon and Walmart. Amazon is the online behemoth that has built arguably the most effective retail distribution network in history. Walmart, the single largest retail chain in the world, has been making serious inroads into online retailing through its purchase of jet.com and subsequent acquisitions of Apparel sites, modcloth.com, moosejaw.com, shoes.com, and bonobos.com.
Apparel is one of the most competitive retail categories with the category leaders having a much smaller market share than the leaders in almost all other categories. Under pressure from pure Apparel brands and General Merchandise retailers, it is a trying time to be selling clothes online.
This paper by Similarweb examines incoming traffic from the US to the top 100 Apparel websites on desktop and mobile from May 1, 2016, to April 30, 2017.
