How This Spring-Season Favorite is Dominating Linen Fashion

Linen, often heralded as the quintessential summer fabric, is undeniably taking center stage in the 2024 fashion landscape. As consumer interest in sustainable and comfortable apparel continues to grow, so does the demand for linen.

As the weather heats up so does the competitive landscape with apparel brands in the US vying to capture market share. Let’s delve into some interesting insights our experts have gathered to better understand the trends and competitive dynamics in the linen sector.

Linen clothing: A surge in popularity

Search volume for linen clothing has grown 32% year-over-year (YoY). This uptick in searches signals robust market potential, especially for the summer period, with the biggest peak from May to July. While this is common, what’s interesting is the searches with growth compared to last year. For example, “linen pants” has a 58% increase in searches compared to last year.

Diving deeper, we see searches for “linen pants for men” and “white linen pants” have a 122% and 92% YoY increase, respectively. Understanding the trending terms allows retailers to adjust their traditional strategies to get more granular.

The competitive landscape: Giants in the (flax) field

In the competitive arena of linen apparel, gap.com has emerged as the dominant player for search traffic. By doubling down on its efforts and investments in the early months of 2024, Gap and its subsidiary site, gapfactory.com, have managed to capture approximately 21% of the total search traffic for linen-related keywords.

But where is that share of search coming from and who are the other players rising?

It’s interesting to note that neither Gap domain appears in the organic search list. This indicates that this audience has a propensity to click on paid ads rather than scroll down.

In the coming months, the paid search battle is likely to heat up. We already see Shein climbing the ranks, and this online retailer has an extremely aggressive paid search strategy to win market share.

Looking at organic search, Amazon is leading the way as the marketplace’s penetration into the fashion world continues to grow. Interestingly, magiclinen.com is second – showing Google that users still trust specialist, niche sites – good news for D2C and specialist retailers.

Magic Linen is winning because they are comprehensively covering the topic, and aside from product pages, they rank well for queries like ‘how to wash linen’ – establishing themselves as an authority in the space.

Strategic keyword allocation for the win

Diving into the specifics of search traffic, Gap’s success is attributed to its strategic investment in paid search. During April 2024, gap.com and gapfactory.com achieved the highest paid search traffic for linen apparel keywords. Their approach included creating swimlanes for keyword allocation between their websites, thereby optimizing their reach and efficiency.

This is smart. The search volume for linen peaks in May-July, so Gap is not only advertising at a time when CPC is lower, it means they can use this time to test ad copy, creatives, and LPs. So when they need to invest more in the peak summer months, they know the ads and journeys that lead to the biggest ROI.

Marketing insights that’ll never wear out

For marketers looking to capitalize on the linen apparel trend, these insights offer a clear roadmap. Here are some steps you can easily follow:

• Keyword strategy: Invest in high-performing keywords specific to linen apparel. Tailoring your PPC campaigns to target seasonal peaks can yield substantial returns, similar to Gap’s early push in 2024.
• Organic optimization: Enhance your organic search presence by optimizing for a broad array of linen-related keywords. This is where smaller, specialist and niche sites can compete with the giants.
• Seasonal marketing: Align your marketing efforts with when demand trends up, ahead of the peak period to maximize visibility and sales. This approach ensures that your strategy is optimized and prepped during the times consumers are actively searching for linen apparel.

Here’s a two-minute video that shows you exactly how to do this, and more:

Secure sustainable growth with Similarweb data

The linen apparel market is an example of a trending or seasonal niche that is ripe with opportunities, especially as consumers continue to lean towards sustainable and comfortable fashion choices.

By uncovering the search trends consumers are most interested in through Similarweb’s extensive data analysis, marketers can strategically position their brands to capture and maximize market share in this competitive landscape at the right time. Jump on trends when they are on the rise, not once they’ve peaked.

Similarweb is the only platform to give marketers search data from the last 28 days —  so you don’t need to wait a month to see which keywords are on the up.

To see this in action, simply sign up for a free trial account.

Photo by Svitlana on Unsplash.

by Maria Pashi

Data Specialist

With 10+ years in CPG and roles at Unilever and Apple, Maria uses data to shape ecommerce strategies and market insights. Outside work, she loves dancing and exploring.