It is so melting damn hot outside (35C!!!) so I choose to stay home today and I did a little study on the Hong Kong apparel market… (yeah you can tell how boring it is today) and here is my little findings which hopefully might give u some insights into the hong kong fashion market.

The numbers are those sales figures in hong kong which the listed h.k. apparel companies achieved over the past years. I also put the retail sales value index (retail sales index in nominal term) as compiled by the statistics department so as to give you a general idea of how the retail market has beeen performing. I divided the companies into 3 groups, namely the trendy group, the luxurious group and the basic group. Trendy groups include I.T. (they have many different brands which target youngsters to younger adult e.g. izzue.com i.t. I.T. alnord palmer A.P.C. b+ab double park oh oh oh too many of them please go to CWB and check them out on paterson street and also their new flagship store which sells the bathing ape in central) and Bauhaus (I haven’t bought a single piece of  clothes from them). Luxurious Group includes Joyce and Moiselli (I m not sure if moiselli belongs to this luxurious group.. please tell me ladies) whereas Basic Group includes Giordano, Bossini and Veeko (again I dunno much about this ladies apparel retailer.. but in recent years they also sell cosmetic items under their Colourmix outlets). These companies of course don’t represent the whole picture but I think they are good proxies for analysis.

One of the reasons I am doing this study is that intuitively I think the trendy fashions are actually cannibalizing the apparel market. People are no longer satisfied with basic items and they want more fashion elements in their clothes (look at those pretttttty gals in CWB muhahaha) This thought proves to be correct by looking into these sales figures. Sales value of trendy group grows from 941 million to 1666 million from 2001 to 2005, representing a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15.34%. Luxurious group grows from 621m to 879m (CAGR of 9.04%), more or less the same CAGR of the sales figures of the apparel universe we are tracking (9.47%). Basic group, however, suffered from being cannibalized. Although the dollar amount actually increased over the years, the CAGR of 6.11% is much less than the other players, or the general apparel universe. Their actual $ amount increased, I suspect, are mainly due to more mainland customers are buying (those come to hongkong to travel..).. not sure about that though… more studies have to be done.

In conclusion, the h.k. apparal market grows over the past 5 years after the SARS epidemic, as the general economy recovers. Trendy fashion, however, outpaced the others (market share in the whole apparel universe grows from 33% to 41%). it is also conceivable that trendy fashion retailers are better place to invest, if you want to do any...

Hong Kong Apparel Universe
Yearly Revenue ('000)
				2005	2004	2003	2002	2001	CAGR
Retail Sales Value Index				109.8	102.9	92.8	94.9	99	2.62%
Delta Retail Sales Value Index				6.71%	10.88%	-2.21%	-4.14%
Trendy Group
I.T.	999 HK	FY 28Feb		1,310,600	1,039,926	812,168	731,983	695,051	17.18%
Bauhaus	483 HK	FY 31Mar		355,823	291,665	254,357	237,071	246,584	9.60%
Trendy Group Total				1,666,423	1,331,591	1,066,525	969,054	941,635	15.34%
Delta Trendy Group Total				25.15%	24.85%	10.06%	2.91%
Luxurious Group
Moiselli	130 HK	FY 31Mar		202,823	217,623	175,626	178,625	174,893	3.77%
Joyce	647 HK	FY 31Mar		676,560	566,631	543,911	507,506	447,069	10.91%
Luxurious Group Total				879,383	784,254	719,537	686,131	621,962	9.04%
Delta Luxurious Group Total				12.13%	8.99%	4.87%	10.32%
Basic Group
Bossini	592 HK	FY 31Mar		1,129,195	1,043,229	834,756	767,334	851,120	7.32%
Giordano	709 HK	FY 31Dec		949,000	838,000	726,000	784,000	775,000	5.19%
Veeko	1173 HK	FY 31Mar		289,768	294,405	265,740	263,993	241,944	4.61%
Basic Group Total				2,367,963	2,175,634	1,826,496	1,815,327	1,868,064	6.11%
Delta Basic Group Total				8.84%	19.12%	0.62%	-2.82%
All Apparel Total				4,034,386	3,507,225	2,893,021	2,784,381	2,809,699	9.47%
Delta All Apparel Total				15.03%	21.23%	3.90%	-0.90%
Trendy % as of All Apparal				41.31%	37.97%	36.87%	34.80%	33.51%