Childrenswear in Asia Pacific

Key findings

Strong historic period growth

In spite of falling birth rates in many countries in the region, including the two biggest markets, childrenswear continued to record healthy growth rates up to 2020 in Asia Pacific. One of the main reasons for this is that parents are generally increasing spend per child, which has been helping maintain positive growth rates in real value terms.

Sales decline in 2020

Childrenswear sales were negatively affected by the pandemic in 2020, with the shutdown of non-essential retail outlets, lockdowns and other measures to slow the spread of the virus restricting shopping opportunities. There was also the economic impact of these measures, making consumers more price sensitive. Nevertheless, childrenswear was one of the least badly hit categories in overall apparel and footwear, given parents tend to reduce spending on themselves before cutting back expenditure on their children as well as the fact that children quickly outgrow their clothing.

Pandemic boosts the e-commerce share

Although store-based retailing continues to dominate apparel sales in Asia Pacific, e-commerce, already seeing healthy annual growth rates prior to the pandemic, received a major boost from the closure of non-essential retail outlets and people unable or unwilling to leave their homes. The strong growth of internet retailing meant that it overtook apparel and footwear specialist retailers to become the leading distribution channel in 2020.

Swift recovery expected in 2021

Childrenswear will rebound with a strong positive growth rate in 2021, and, also in this year, will immediately return to its pre-pandemic sales level. Further strong growth will be seen over the rest of the forecast period, with China continuing to drive the overall regional performance.