With the global epidemic rising and falling, the textile and clothing industry has also been moving forward in the economic recovery. The new situation accelerates the technological change of the industry, and gives birth to new business forms and new models, and also leads to the change of consumption demand. One of the main change is the sustainable clothing consumption.
From the perspective of consumption mode, retail is transferred to online.
The trend of retail transfer to the online is obvious and will continue to rise in a certain period of time. In the United States, penetration of e-commerce is expected to reach 24% in 2024 in 2019, but by July, 2020, online sales share has reached 33%. In 2021, although the worries of the epidemic continued, the US clothing spending rebounded rapidly and showed a new growth trend. The growth of global clothing expenditure is expected to be positive, the impact of the epidemic on people’s lifestyle will continue, and the trend of online sales is accelerated and continued.
Although the epidemic has led to fundamental changes in consumer shopping mode and rapid growth of online sales, even if the epidemic situation is over, online and offline integrated shopping mode will be fixed into a new normal. According to statistics, 17 percent of consumers will purchase all or most of the items online, and the number of people who shop in physical stores alone has also dropped from 71% to 51% before. Of course, for clothing buyers, the physical store still has the advantages of trial wear, easy consultation and so on.
From the perspective of consumer products, sports clothing and functional clothing will become a new hot spot in the market.
The epidemic situation further caused consumers to pay attention to health, sports clothing market will usher in a big development. According to statistics, the sales volume of sports clothes in China last year was US $19.4 billion (mainly including sports clothes, outdoor clothes and sports elements), and it is expected to increase by 92% in five years; The U.S. sportswear sales have reached $70billion, and it is expected to grow at an annual growth rate of 9 percent over the next five years.
From the perspective of consumers’ expectation, clothing with moisture absorption and sweat, temperature control, odor removal, wear-resistant, water splashing and other functions and more comfortable clothing is more likely to attract consumers.
The report shows that 42 percent of respondents believe that wearing comfortable clothes can improve mental health, making them feel happy, calm, casual and even safe. Compared with artificial fiber, 84% of respondents think that cotton clothing is the most comfortable, and the consumption market of cotton textile products still has a great development space, and the functional technology of cotton should be paid more attention.
From the perspective of consumption concept, more attention has been paid to sustainable development (clothing consumption statistics).
From the current trend, consumers have high expectations for the sustainable clothing consumption. They hope that from clothing production to recycling, they can reduce environmental pollution in a more environmentally friendly way. Here is one of the clothing consumption statistics. The survey results showed that 35% of the respondents were aware of the pollution of plastic particles, and 68% of them claimed that it would affect their clothing purchase decisions. This requires the textile industry to pay attention to the degradability of materials to make eco friendly fabric, and guide consumers’ purchase decisions through the popularization of sustainable concept.
In addition to degradability, from the perspective of consumers, improving durability and reducing resource waste is also one of the means of sustainable development. Ordinary consumers are used to evaluate the durability of clothing by washing resistance and fiber composition. Affected by the habit of dressing all the time, they prefer cotton products emotionally. Based on the consumer’s demand for the quality and durability of cotton, it is necessary to further enhance the wear resistance and strength of cotton fabric in the improvement of textile function.
The epidemic makes the big changes in fashion textile from the step 1 to the end. Customers have more attentions on sustainable fashion based on eco friendly fabric with the recycled and environmental materials.