Textile sales in Germany rose to 67.3 billion euros last year. This was the result of the first projections by the Textile Shoes Leather Goods Trade Association (BTE).
Accordingly, retail sales of clothing and house and home textiles in 2022 increased by around five percent, more than three billion euros, compared to the previous year, the BTE announced on Thursday. With a slight increase of 0.1 percent, the result is above the pre-corona level of 2019.
The positive development of textile sales is due in particular to house and home textiles. Here, sales exceeded the previous year’s value by 15 percent and are in the mid-single-digit percentage range above sales in 2019. “Despite a strong race to catch up, sales of clothing have not yet reached the pre-Corona level,” says BTE Managing Director Axel Augustine. The stationary clothing trade – for which the e-commerce activities of boutiques, fashion houses and vertically organized textile chains were also taken into account for the calculations – was able to increase its sales by almost 28 percent in 2022. The result is still 6.5 percent below the pre-corona level.
According to the projections of the BTE, the specialist clothing trade and the trade in home and household textiles account for 53.5 percent of textile sales in Germany. The trade in clothing amounts to around 30 billion euros, while the home and household textiles trade accounts for a further six billion euros.
Online trade and department stores are weakening
While stationary trade will increase in 2022 compared to the previous year, which was still heavily influenced by pandemic-related restrictions, sales in online trade will fall by around six percent compared to the previous year. According to the projections, total sales were over 19 billion euros. Compared to the pre-Corona level of 2019, this is an increase of around a third and accounts for 28.5 percent of textile sales.
Department stores, discounters and all other retail sectors that stock textile ranges are also weaker than brick-and-mortar retailers. Compared to 2021, sales here fell by around a fifth to 12 billion euros. 18 percent of the entire textile turnover can be traced back to “other stationary trade”.
The BTE projections look at retail sales of clothing, house and home textiles without taking shoes into account.