The past three years have been a truly unprecedented period for luxury apparel retailing in Canada resulting in Canada being recognized as a major world wide market for luxury brands.
According to a recent report by marketing research and consulting firm Trendex North America, while COVID caused a decline in the size of the Canadian luxury apparel market during that time, the market’s level of competition increased significantly as well as an unprecedented boom in luxury retailing construction.
“There is no doubt that the increase in the number of luxury apparel retailers, regardless of what country they came from, have served to offer Canadian consumers more luxury apparel choices,” says the report.
Sales of luxury apparel e-commerce grew by 9.8 per cent in 2022 to C$ 236 million. Increasing millennial and Gen Z spending, the growth of omni-channel shopping, and the rise in popularity of online luxury retailers all contributed to the rise.
Even while the projected 9.4 per cent share of Canadian sales of luxury apparel attributable to e-commerce luxury stores was pre-COVID, the channel has been expanding far more quickly than the market as a whole.
Randy Harris, president and owner of Trendex North America, said he expects the market this year to grow by 11.1 per cent which is almost triple what the total market will grow which is 4.1 per cent.
“Long term if you at from 2022 to 2026 the growth of luxury apparel should be about 42 per cent over that period. That is one year compared to the other. Whereas the total market will only grow 15.4 per cent over that same five-year period,” he said.
