blog|Industry Insights and Trends

The State of the Ecommerce Fashion Industry: Statistics, Trends, and Strategies to Use in 2025

The ecommerce fashion industry is changing drastically. Here are the trends, strategies, and data you need to know in 2025.

by
Collage of fashion items including a shirt, handbag, sweater, jeans, and leather top on a gradient background.

The fashion and apparel industry continues to demonstrate its dominant position in ecommerce. The sector has achieved a remarkable $781 billion market value—a number projected to more than double within six years.

Still, fashion retailers face many macroeconomic headwinds.

There are mixed signals on whether inflation is set to continue, but scarred consumers are still buying with caution. According to Ipsos's 2024 global consumer research, 32% of consumers across 29 countries still cite inflation as their primary worry. While major retailers initially responded with price increases, they've faced strong resistance from inflation-weary consumers prioritizing essential spending. 

The National Retail Federation reports that retailers' gross margins are actually lower now than during most of the pre-pandemic period, demonstrating that price increases were driven by rising input costs rather than profit-taking. 

Shifts in the demanded customer experience are also proving challenging, especially among younger consumers. Recent data from McKinsey shows over 75% of consumers are trading down their purchases for better value and pricing. When you zoom in to Gen Z and millennials, that number rises to 86%. This demographic increasingly craves sustainable retail—though reviews are mixed on whether they’re willing to pay for it. And they also want tech-enabled shopping, blending digital and physical retail environments.

Fashion brands must now navigate these complex market conditions while adapting to evolving consumer preferences. There are a lot of needles to thread, but getting it right streamlines both the consumer and the back-end experiences to drive growth, keep fashion brands nimble, and unlock innovation. 

Top fashion ecommerce trends for 2025

Here’s a quick look at the trends we’ll be diving into:

1. Social commerce and shoppable content

Social media plays an integral role in many online fashion brands’ ecommerce marketing strategies. That’s hardly surprising—our daily lives are no longer complete without our smartphones. The typical social media user now spends about 143 minutes daily on social media, which equals nearly 2½ hours. In an average lifespan of 73 years, that’s nearly 6 years of their life.

Some 62% of consumers watch videos to learn about a product or brand before they buy. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram drive sales for large fashion brands, allowing shoppers to visualize the product on a real person—and there are bonus points if it’s through a social media influencer they already trust.

But social media is no longer a place for shoppers to just learn about new fashion trends; it’s also a place for shoppers to buy as they learn, through in-app, integrated shopping experiences. This shortens the line between influencer product promotion and an actual purchase, right inside the apps where customers are already engaged, such as Instagram, TikTok Shop, Meta, buyable pins on Pinterest, and more. 

In fact, social commerce sales are expected to reach one in five sales by 2025, with 70% of Instagram users looking to the social media platform for their next purchase. Newer to the social selling sphere, TikTok Shop’s integrated shopping journeys show particular potential, providing access to the platform’s more than 33 million users. Current projections for shopping on the platform from Capital One indicate that 43% of users will use it to make purchases by 2027. 

TikTok Shop is easy to use with your Shopify store with an integration that helps you easily create videos, track conversions, and optimize campaigns through instant data reporting. That’s just one app among many in the Shopify app store which fashion retailers can easily plug in to instantly tap into the latest selling trend at low cost and low risk—and without having to wait 6 to 12 months to work its way through a developer’s queue. As social selling channels evolve, the ability to pivot your tech, selling, and marketing strategy quickly is key.

2. Unified shopping experiences

The shopping experience is more multichannel than ever—especially in the fashion space. Consumers want to discover a new look from an influencer on social media, research reviews online, try items on in-store, and return them with a third-party logistics provider (3PL). While many brick-and-mortar stores closed during the pandemic, more and more digital-first brands are opening new physical stores. The fitness brand Gymshark keeps opening new stores in popular regions, while the CEO of the women’s fashion brand Evereve has said they’re aiming for 200 physical retail stores by 2030.

With more pressure on retailers than ever to grow, and just as many headwinds to navigate, it’s important to show up on every channel your customer does—including the traditional ones. As Shopify president Harley Finkelstein says, it’s not about showing up everywhere—rather, “to win in retail today, you need to be everywhere that makes sense. The future of commerce has no channels at all. It's an invisible thread woven seamlessly through every aspect of consumers' lives. The old world was about being everywhere; the new world is about being exactly where your customer needs you, exactly when they need you, in a way that feels completely organic.”

“To do that,” Harley continues, “you need to remove the toil of a legacy technology system. That starts with a unified core platform so you can do what you’re best at in a more meaningful way.”

One key way to achieve this is by providing instant recognition with a unified customer data platform that creates a singular view of the customer. Wherever the customer leaves a mark, that information is captured in one place, then analyzed and fed to each arm of the marketing and sales flows to better bring customers into the funnel.

“Just think about what it takes for a promotion to work on every platform,” says Eduardo Frias, field CTO at Shopify. “It has to work for TikTok, it has to work for Facebook, it has to work for Instagram, it has to work for online ecommerce, right?” 

This principle should also be followed for the overall shopping experience.

Eduardo continues, “Unified commerce helps brands from both an implementation and a cost perspective with a single platform powering all of these different channels. ‘This customer looked at this ad on Facebook, and she clicked on this thing on Instagram, and she ended up buying it via ecommerce.’ When you know this, you can start making decisions as to where to spend your online advertisement dollars.”

Unified commerce is an excellent way for fashion retailers to create skyrocketing ROAS—but it’s also about the entire shopping experience, which should be about “meeting the customers where they are,” says Kal Stephen, head of enterprise, Lifestyle Vertical at Shopify. “It's the responsibility of the brand to make sure that they're showing up wherever their customer is: physical, digital, social, and more.”

Shopify POS is a great tool for creating a seamless bridge between physical retail and online channels by unifying every aspect of the retail operation. When Shop Pay customers shop in-store, they’re instantly recognized so retail associates can customize their experience. For those customers that are not on Shop Pay, Shopify POS still captures their data at checkout, helping to turn the “data abyss” of the physical store into one that is data-rich and ripe for retargeting, marketing, and engagement online. 

OAK + Fort migrated to Shopify and integrated Shopify POS after consulting with leading integrator EY to power their upmarket journey. The result has been a unified commerce experience, better inventory management, seamless payment, and much richer sales data that helps the company forecast demand, check inventory levels, and replenish with speed—especially during promotional periods. Platform and data unification creates better operational experiences on the back end, which translate into better customer experiences on the front end. 

“The time is now, don’t wait. If I could do anything differently, I would have engaged with EY 2 years ago and we would’ve been on Shopify way sooner.” OAK + FORT Jennifer Pearson, VP of IT & eCom Solutions

The unified approach drives business growth, with retailers seeing an average 8.9% increase in gross merchandise value (GMV) when using Shopify POS for unified commerce. 

3. A personalized customer journey

Personalization has long been hailed as the secret of modern ecommerce, with 81% of customers saying they prefer brands that offer personalized shopping experiences that anticipate customer needs.

According to Kal. “We're in an environment where customers want things when they want them, and there's very little compromise on that. People who are buying fashion items, apparel, and accessories are showing up everywhere—and they want the right product recommended to them at the right time.”

By showing a shopper items they were previously interested in, or retargeting them based on their interactions with your ecommerce website, you’re providing a tailored online shopping experience—one that convinces them to buy.

That said, too much personalization can feel creepy, hence why 40% of shoppers don’t trust companies to use their data ethically, and 30% flat-out refuse to share their data at all.

The use of third-party data has been a large driver of this perception.

“We’ve always had better data sets around,” says Eduardo Frias. “But third-party data was easy to buy and repackage into marketing and acquisition efforts that worked just well enough to merit not changing.”

That’s finally changing, with third-party data falling to the wayside in favor of zero- and first-party data. In fact, 78% of businesses now say first-party data is the most valuable source for personalization.

First-party data can be collected via methods like:

  • Website forms
  • Click data
  • Support conversations
  • Loyalty programs
  • Newsletter signups

Because first-party data comes from sources that the customer is fully aware of, consumers are more trusting.

Parachute has effectively harnessed first-party customer data by integrating HubSpot with Shopify POS to develop detailed customer profiles on which they build personalized and engaging marketing and shopping experiences. This allows in-store associates to follow up with customers post-purchase, referencing previous interactions and preferences—and they do so in a real, human way that demonstrates they are paying attention and care about how the product experience is going for their customers. This not only enhances customer satisfaction, but also fosters loyalty. 

Parachute also uses customer first-party data to identify similar interests and passions across their consumer base. This is how the brand realized that many of their customers are pet lovers, often sharing their beds with their favorite pooches. The brand organized a dog bed party event, complete with pup photo shoots, to further solidify their connection with the community and showcase their understanding of customer lifestyles.

Learn even more about how your business can create personalized experiences with first-party data by downloading our Seeing Around Corners: Personalization white paper. 

4. AI, AI, AI

From virtual assistants that help customers try on clothes, to chatbots and inventory management for brands, AI is fast becoming a valuable tool for fashion buyers and sellers.

According to McKinsey, generative AI may end up adding between $150 billion and $275 billion to the fashion industry in the next five years. AI can help with design, development, 3D imaging, and creating realistic-looking models for campaigns.

Shopping

We just talked about how important personalization is to shoppers. AI can help brands create hyper-immersive, personalized shopping experiences that will wow audiences and boost conversions. 

AI chatbots can help shoppers find the products they’re most likely to be interested in, and assist throughout the entire checkout process. These chatbots can also be excellent customer service representatives, using first-party customer data to seamlessly help with past purchases.

This is important, as 74% of consumers report to McKinsey that they’ve walked away from a purchase due to the volume of choice, and 80% report dissatisfaction with online search as a barrier to purchase. With AI chatbots and AI-powered search rapidly improving in accuracy and reducing hallucination rates, apparel retailers would do well to begin experiments in AI-powered product discovery.

AI-powered software like True Fit helps customers virtually find the right fit, solving a huge pain point for online fashion retailers.

Shopify retailer Frye takes advantage of True Fit’s software to help customers find the right shoe size the first time, helping to drastically reduce returns and exchanges.

Source

Operations

AI is already in the analytics and marketing fields, generating real-time insights, automated reports, and visualizations that provide comprehensive data. Retailers use this data to discover market trends, areas of risk in the supply chain, customer needs, and more.

Using AI for both predictive and prescriptive insights smooths operations and helps retailers get ahead. These insights can help with inventory and store management, price optimization, and supply chain management, then immediately deliver creative assets for the campaign that’s needed to move that surplus inventory off of shelves.

AI can also assist with marketing automation. Input a simple command like, “Run a 20% off campaign on this pair of flip-flops for two weeks,” and have that deal set up and plugged into your analytics and sales and fulfillment back end, where it will run completely on its own.

Harness the power of AI with apps 

Design

AI is also having a huge impact on visuals and design. One Gartner report predicts that “by 2025, 20% of images and video used in digital commerce will be created from text prompts using GenAI.”

With AI, you can instantly reimagine the scenes in a company’s product images in time for the latest holiday season. Or, simply help a customer imagine your product in different spaces.

“Say you're selling flip-flops,” says Kal. “You can take an original image shot in a studio and show them on the beach. Then, show them by the pool. Just keep regenerating based on the customer context.”

Similarly, you can help a customer find the perfect outfit based on a look her favorite celebrity is wearing in a photo. Simply describe the image or video needed to illustrate a point in a blogpost, then have an AI produce it.

It’s all already possible, with tools like Shopify Magic. 

Other ideas include swapping out creative elements of dynamic ads based on what you know about the audience you’re advertising to, quickly writing accurate and compelling product descriptions, and better personalizing product landing pages. 

Overall, AI empowers fashion retailers to create more dynamic and personal advertising and site experiences, with the ability to quickly whip up and implement new creative based on analytics and first-party data.

5. The continuation of the metaverse

The definition of “metaverse” is open to interpretation. While the not-quite-defined promise of virtual societies is still in development, the idea is that people can conduct daily activities—like connecting with friends, playing a game, or purchasing products—using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology.

AR and VR can both be used in the fashion world. One popular method for incorporating this type of technology is through virtual fitting rooms—an easy way for consumers to shop for items from the comfort of their own homes, like with a virtual shoe or accessory try-on.

As virtual reality becomes more accessible in homes and VR headsets grow in popularity, we see more fashion brands making it possible to shop virtually. Activewear brand Alo Yoga created its own virtual shop for the Meta Quest 2 VR headset, giving customers an immersive shopping experience.

Source

Not only can customers shop virtually, giving them the ability to try on different styles right from home using their VR headset, but they can also stream wellness tutorials and attend workout classes.

Another strategy in the realm of AR/VR is partnering with virtual universe platform Roblox.

That’s what Forever 21 did, creating virtual fashion ecommerce stores in their metaverse named the Forever 21 Shop City. Players run the virtual store as if it were their own, and they purchase merchandise for their avatar through the game.

Fashion brands are using Roblox to create immersive experiences for users and reach Gen Z audiences. Shopify businesses can take advantage of our Roblox integration to set theirs up, and not only imagine the future but also create it.

6. The rise of resale

Secondhand apparel is becoming a global phenomenon. The resale market grew 18% in 2023 alone—15 times faster than the broader retail sector, according to a report by McKinsey. It is expected to account for 10% of the global apparel market by 2025, and to reach a $350 billion market valuation by 2028.

Technology and online marketplaces are driving this trend, with online resale seeing an even bigger growth of 23% in 2023. Around 52% of consumers shopped secondhand apparel in 2023, and 59% say if they can’t find a good deal on an apparel item, they won’t buy it at all. Another driver with resale is the control it gives brands over the quality of secondhand goods in circulation.

As Kal explains, “Resale in general has taken off because a lot of products—especially in the luxury vertical—are getting more and more expensive. Used and resale products offer a way for brands to sell their product to customers at a lower price point while still offering the advantages of getting customers engaged in entering into their brand.”

Fashion brands have noticed this same trend: 2023 saw a 31% growth in brands offering their own resale programs.

For example, Dôen, a California-based premium fashion brand, launched a resale program called Hand Me Dôen. The program allows customers to send in preowned Dôen products in exchange for store credit.

Dôen then hosts flash sales throughout the year when the resold products become available. The goal of not making resale available all the time is to prevent customers from visiting the site and finding it already picked over.

Shein has its own online peer-to-peer resale platform, Shein Exchange, which gained 4.2 millions users in the US in 2023.

Recommerce is a key strategy for sustainable shoe company Allbirds, whose audience cares about contributing to a circular economy. Thanks to a partnership with Trove, the company is able to offer customers $20 of in-store credit for returning their used shoes, which are then resold on the ReRun platform at a lower price. It’s all about the company’s commitment to creating and upholding a more sustainable fashion economy. 

Recommerce also has clear business and operational benefits, recapturing materials from a sale that would have otherwise taken place on a third-party marketplace. That matters in an economy where every new growth channel helps.

7. Digital payments as a growth-driver

Consumers are using more forms of digital payments, more often. Traditional methods for digital payments like credit cards remain popular, but many newer forms of payment, such as digital wallets, buy now, pay later (BNPL), and cryptocurrency, are on the rise, with BNPL particularly popular among Gen Z and millennials for fashion shopping. Mobile POS payments in the US alone are similarly projected to grow from 66.07 million users in 2023 to 101.11 million by 2028. And digital payments in-app and in-store represent approximately $10 trillion of annual consumer-to-business spending across the United States and Europe. Accordingly, it should come as no surprise that one in five people who rely on digital wallets leave their physical wallets at home.

Digital payments are, to put it mildly, for real. But it’s not just that consumers are using digital payments more. Digital payments in themselves have become a platform where consumers begin their shopping journey—particularly in the case of buy now, pay later platforms and offer marketplaces.

A McKinsey report explains: “This shift to digital payments is becoming increasingly important as an origination point for shoppers’ decision making—and not merely a checkout option—and may signal the need for payment providers to think about how they can reach and engage consumers earlier in the shopping process.”

It’s important for fashion retailers to consider where they’re meeting their customers, and how and when they’re sweetening the pot—especially given McKinsey’s finding that users who begin their journeys with BNPL and aggregator marketplaces spend 1.5 to 2 times more than those who begin on a merchant’s website or app. It’s early days for incentives embedded into digital payments, but findings from the US indicate that roughly 25% of respondents are motivated by the ability to collect points, and that discounts drive their payment choice.

One takeaway for fashion retailers who participate in the digital payments ecosystem is to ensure all rewards are applied cross-channel. A reward offered for an online purchase should be redeemable in-store. Rewards can also be used strategically to motivate consumers to buy cross-channel to help move inventory where it’s lingering. 

BNPL marketplaces and aggregated offer marketplaces are here to stay. It’s worth developing dedicated programs with them and thinking out regular incentives and strategies balanced with your bottom line. 

8. Sustainability—with caveats

Sustainability has been a hot topic in the fashion industry for years now. But when it comes to consumer demand, ideals don’t always live up to behavior.

While 70% of shopperssay they are willing to pay more for sustainably produced goods, value tends to trump sustainability. Consumers want sustainable products. But they also want affordability, and still consume fast fashion.

It’s not just consumer wallets at the heart of this—it’s also brand perception. In a 2020 study of Spanish fashion consumers, respondents cited a “lack of trust in companies and their sustainable statements” as “the main reason preventing them from buying sustainable products or doing it more often.”

Taken together, this indicates that consumers are savvy to greenwashing, that they only want sustainability they can trust, and even then, that they’ll only complete a purchase if the price is right.

That’s the consumer demand side of things. But let’s not forget that sustainability does have back-end business benefits. As McKinsey writes in their State of Fashion Report 2025, sustainability-minded operational efficiencies benefit the whole business by streamlining operations and increasing efficiency—all competitive advantages in an increasingly competitive and volatile environment. 

Shopify Collective offers a unique opportunity to balance sustainability with affordability by enabling seamless collaboration with established sustainable brands. 

Retailers can test new sustainable products without inventory investment through Collective’s automated dropshipping system, while suppliers can expand their reach through trusted retail partners. This reduces your overall carbon footprint by eliminating the need for multiple warehousing steps and enabling more efficient direct-to-consumer shipping. You’ll expand your catalog without the risk of holding inventory.

9. Community through IRL experiences

“Gen Z broke the marketing funnel.” 

That’s the title of a recent Vogue article based on a comprehensive study of both Gen Z and millennial shoppers by the culture research firm, Archrival.

The finding?

“Consumption today is an infinite loop of inspiration, exploration, community, and loyalty,” as Vogue puts it. 

That’s thanks to near-constant connection on social media, which simultaneously creates a whole lot of noise and strong desire to find retail gold within it.

One key way to find it: building community. According to the study, 54% of Gen Z shoppers prefer brands that make them feel like part of a community—not surprising, given the larger Gen Z trend towards feelings of loneliness. 

IRL popups are a great way to form those initial connections and reactivate them as well.

Kal explains, “We're seeing a lot of brands offer more in-person experiences. For example, they're showing up at concerts and sporting events and offering nontransactional experiences to drive loyalty.”

Luggage retailer BÉIS is one such brand that’s testing the waters with popup shops. Their goal is to reengage customers by creating a unique shopping experience that they can’t necessarily get in a regular store, and to test out new markets while they’re at it.

Particularly popular are the brand’s bag washes, popups where customers bring their much-loved bags in to be lovingly washed. Lines are consistently around the block.

Even BÉIS’s more traditional popups, meant just to generate sales, are highly successful.

“We see an average 30% increase in traffic during popup activation and an average revenue lift of 10%,” reports BÉIS CEO Adeela Hussain Johnson.

Shoe brand Steve Madden has also experimented with popups targeted at college students as a way of better reaching that demographic. The brand created a 3D shoebox showroom on college campuses to showcase and sell their products while also gamifying the experience and ensuring shoppers have a great time with the brand.

Students browse through the giant shoebox, purchase shoes, and participate in games, like spinning a wheel to win prizes. 

Source

This has resulted in over 40,000 impressions, 16,000 engagements, and five minutes of dwell time per interaction.

No matter what your approach, community building, like the entire customer experience, should be both omnichannel and unified. The excitement you generate in person should be followed up online, whether through personal outreach, personalized offers, or online events. Keep your brand top of mind while building loyalty to cut through the noise. 

10. Diversification of business models

The rise of digital platforms has made it easier than ever for brands to create user-friendly B2B portals, as demonstrated by the affordable swimwear brand Kulani Kinis. With the majority of their success achieved through DTC, the company wanted to expand their wholesale arm with the help of a B2B storefront as intuitive to use as their DTC sites. Already a Shopify customer, they created an expansion store for wholesale customers through Shopify Plus’ B2B feature to offer customized collection pages with sliders for all swimwear, as well as an easy add-to-cart capability, allowing customers to add multiple sizes and large quantities of products to their shopping cart without leaving the collection page. 

In an era when growth at any cost has been replaced with the need for profitable growth, diversifying your business channels just makes sense.

However, when wholesale brands suddenly pivot their focus too heavily to DTC, they risk alienating their wholesale partners, as we saw with the challenges Nike encountered by going all-in with DTC. With the snap of the fingers, a dominant brand left a gaping hole in the wholesale market that competitors eagerly rushed to fill. 

And there are risks, too, to DTC brands moving too quickly and at too large of a scale into wholesale. These include largely giving up control of how your brand’s products are marketed and sold, putting more distance between you and your customer, and going head-to-head with bigger, more established, better-resourced competitors. Brand dilution is a risk for DTC companies whose very proximity to customers is one of their defining features. 

It’s important to find a sweet spot that nurtures both channels without oversaturating the market, viewing DTC and wholesale less as entirely separate strategies, and instead under a single umbrella, executed on multiple channels.

“It's all just a form of commerce where you're engaging with your end-consumer at different touchpoints,” says Kal. “These historically different solutions should now be viewed as a single solution run through different channels. By bringing this all together, brands can then think about growing their overall commerce business.”

Viewed this way, each channel can be tapped for the unique strength it brings: DTC for building relationships with customers, fostering a great customer experience, and building community; and wholesale for strategically expanding reach and brand presence—testing one product or slice of the market at a time. 

New Balance is a great example of this, having successfully maintained strong relationships with wholesalers while also enhancing their DTC strategies. 

“We believe wholesale is a really important part of reaching the consumer,” says New Balance CEO Joe Preston in a recent interview. “We pride ourselves on trying to be a good partner for our wholesale partners… At the same time, we also know that our focus on DTC allows us to present the brand in the best way, and we believe that combination is very powerful.”

This balanced hybrid approach allows brands to enjoy the benefits of both worlds—gaining exposure through wholesale channels while simultaneously fostering a direct connection with consumers. 

Still, as competition heats up, fashion retailers need to think creatively about how to stand out in both DTC and wholesale environments. This might mean offering unique in-store experiences or exclusive product lines to keep wholesale partners engaged and excited. 

“We’re all about branding, appeal and aesthetic, and with Shopify Plus, we’ve been able to make the wholesale store feel like us,” says Alex Babich, managing director and cofounder of Kulani Kinis. “Shopify’s B2B capabilities have given us the cohesive brand experience we wanted and customization options that meet the needs of our wholesale partners. We’re not bound by others’ constraints.”

The company still gets to control their brand experience and own the customer relationship—all right on their highly customized, easy-to-use B2B site.

Curious what your B2B store could look like? Try our demo. /b2b-demo-store

Ultimately, the journey to success in fashion retail lies in striking the right balance between DTC and wholesale approaches. Brands should continuously assess their distribution strategies, staying attuned to changing consumer behaviors and market dynamics. By nurturing strong relationships with wholesale partners while also investing in DTC initiatives, fashion retailers can create a robust and resilient business model that thrives in today’s competitive landscape. 

Ecommerce fashion statistics

According to Statista, the ecommerce fashion industry’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is projected to reach 13.3% between 2017 and 2027, with the industry hitting a $770.9 billion valuation in 2024.

Within the fashion umbrella, sales of apparel and accessories continue to rise, hitting $134.5 billion in the US alone. Statista estimates that figure will grow to $219.3 billion by 2029.

Let’s dive into other key statistics that relate back to the top trends of the year.

Social commerce:

Sustainability:

  • The fashion industry is responsible for nearly 10% of the global carbon dioxide output.
  • 70% of consumers consider sustainability when making fashion purchases.
  • The global sustainable-fashion market was valued at $7.8 billion in 2023, and is estimated to hit $33.05 billion by 2030.

Personalizing the customer journey:

Artificial intelligence (AI):

  • Generative AI could add $150 to $275 billion to the fashion industry’s profits.
  • The global AI-in-fashion market is expected to hit $4.4 billion by 2027.
  • The top two use cases for AI by fashion industry professionals are writing marketing copy and producing visual content.

Metaverse:

  • The potential market expenditure of the US apparel sector in the metaverse is $594 billion.
  • 40% of consumers are interested in using AR/VR apps while shopping.
  • The virtual fitting room market size is estimated at $3.42 billion.

Resale:

BNPL:

Omnichannel shopping:

Popups:

  • 80% of brands that have opened a popup shop say it was successful.
  • 44% of brands spent less than $5,000 to run their popup shop.
  • The top three reasons for opening a popup shop were to generate instant buzz, to create customer connections, and to launch a new product.

Diversification:

Inspirational fashion ecommerce businesses

Before we wrap up, take a quick look at a few big-name brands in the fashion industry seeing big wins with ecommerce.

Kotn

Kotn has sustainability at an affordable price point as their core principle, and they’ve more than lived up to that in their near decade as a fashion ecommerce retailer. The Toronto-founded brand gives back to the community that gives them their product materials: Egypt. The company continues working to build schools in that country (a total of 18 so far), benefiting over 100,000 lives in the region with work and education.

SKIMS

There’s no fashion ecommerce brand quite like Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS. Kardashian’s brand is the pinnacle of social media and fashion converging. In 2023 alone, the business leader and influencer managed to take her DTC fashion brand to new heights, which included an expanded men’s line and a partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA) and Swarovski.

SKIMS has set the tone for affordable shapewear, loungewear, pajamas, and lingerie, among other products, by using social media effectively for marketing and shopping, and utilizing popup retail spots. SKIMS shows their products on different body types as well.

Aimé Leon Dore

Streetwear and cult fashion brands come and go, and today’s offering is Aimé Leon Dore. The New York-based brand has a broad appeal to all types of buyers who want to get in on the hype. The simplicity of the design, collaborations with New Balance and Porsche, and celebrity cosigns create ideal conditions for this fashion brand—based in Queens, New York—to make it big online in a world where aesthetics are king.

Seize the fashion opportunity with Shopify

As the fashion industry continues to grow, you’ll need an ecommerce platform you can trust—a tool that will be there for you through the highs and lows of business, and never let you down.

That’s where we come in.

Whether you’re looking to boost conversions and lower costs or build a presence anywhere from retail to online to wholesale—or anything in-between—we’ve got you covered. And because we build with the future in mind, you’ll never have to worry about outgrowing your platform again.

Learn more about what makes Shopify the most robust option for innovative fashion brands looking to take the world by storm. Get in touch today

Read more

Fashion Ecommerce FAQ

What is fashion ecommerce?

Fashion ecommerce is the selling and buying of fashion and apparel online. The fashion ecommerce industry is a highly competitive space where stores will try various marketing methods to stand out.

How big is the fashion ecommerce market?

According to Statista, the ecommerce fashion market is estimated to be US$781 billion in 2024. The market is expected to reach $1.6 trillion by 2030.

Is fashion ecommerce the largest ecommerce market segment?

Yes, fashion ecommerce is the largest B2C ecommerce market.

How can a fashion ecommerce mobile app boost revenue?

A fashion shopping app can make more money by showing users products they'll probably like based on what they've looked at before, and sending notifications about special deals. Plus, making it super easy to try clothes virtually and check out quickly means more people actually buy products instead of abandoning their cart.

by
Last updated
Share article

popular posts

subscription banner
The latest in commerce

Get news, trends, and strategies for unlocking unprecedented growth.

Unsubscribe anytime. By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify.

Popular

Powering commerce at scale

Speak with our team on how to bring Shopify into your tech stack.

Get in touch