Cost of Living Down Under: How is Australia’s Fashion Sector Fairing?

Over the past 12 months, Australian consumers have endured 12 interest rate rises. Due to the lag in how these increases filter through to homeowners, it’s only in the past two or three months we’ve started to really feel their impact – both for homeowners and for renters having their rents increased to cover higher mortgage repayments.

That in itself is enough to put a dampener on consumer spending, but with inflation at record-high levels (which is the catalyst for the rate hikes), we wanted to explore what the impact has been on Australian ecommerce traffic.

Over the coming days, we’ll unpack the impact on three Australian ecommerce sectors: Fashion and Apparel, Consumer Electronics, and Beauty and Cosmetics.

Today, we’ll pull at the seams of Australia’s online Fashion and Apparel sector.

Key takeaways

• Web traffic to Australia’s top Fashion and Apparel websites fell 1.9% YoY in the first six months of this year.
• The sector’s two juggernauts, The Iconic and Shein, are neck-and-neck in the race for category leader.
• Challenger brands are doubling down on paid traffic acquisition channels to carve out their own slice of the pie.
• Nike.com is failing to capitalize on surging interest in its products, with demand being met by retail partners.

The battle for the top spot gets tighter

The biggest story in Australia’s Fashion and Apparel sector is the ongoing battle between The Iconic and Shein.

For years, The Iconic had a seemingly unassailable lead as the biggest player in the category. However, as we can see here, Shein has almost caught up off the back of an incredible 37% YoY growth rate.

As economic pressures increase, this would seemingly benefit Shein, as they’re known for affordable prices.

With 37% year-over-year growth, Shein is catching up to The Iconic

Category Leaders are defined as the top websites in the respective category based on their Traffic Share.

Category Challengers refer to websites with over 500,000 Average Monthly Visits, experiencing the highest rate of growth within the category.

Dissh, St. Frock, and Sussan emerge as strong challengers, showing impressive YoY growth

We can also see what appears to be a reemerging fitness/home workout trend with increases for Rebel Sport, JD Sport, and Footlocker. Despite this, nike.com saw an 11% decline in traffic – remember this, because it will be important…

On the ‘Challengers’ table, it’s clear Women’s Fashion is driving the three fastest-growing Fashion brands with Dissh, St. Frock, and Sussan all posting impressive growth figures.

So in a sector where the overall trend was one of decline, how did these Challenger brands post such impressive growth rates?

To find out, and see the intrigue behind Nike.com’s declining Australian traffic, download the full report

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Methodology

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by Similarweb