Italian fashion starts e-tail recovery, but sales are still down says data

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Apr 15, 2020

The Italian fashion industry was hit hard due to the country being the first one in Europe to face a major battle against the coronavirus. But new data shows that it's beginning the road to recovery with an 18% increase in online consumer purchases, although it’s still down overall.

The figures come from Emarsys and its ccinsight.org platform that showed just how much of a hit Italian fashion has taken. In the past two months of the crisis, ccinsight has recorded a 40% drop in e-commerce fashion order numbers across Italian brands. Revenue from the fashion and accessories segment dropped by 26% over this period.

The collapse peaked in late March, but ccinsight has seen “a slow but steady recovery across the Italian fashion sector” since then. From March 28, the data has shown a steady climb in orders of 18% and an increase in revenue of 13%. 

And that’s good news for the Italian luxury sector as it's a major supplier of luxury items to consumers globally. Emarsys said that “among the fashion items seeing a wider global uplift right now are luxury goods such as handbags and trainers, along with gloves and sportswear” and these are all areas in which Italian brands excel.

But that's not to say that the Italian fashion sector is out of the woods just yet as it's still “significantly down” compared to pre-coronavirus levels. According to ccinsight, this also leaves Italy’s fashion industry in bad shape compared to those of other nations impacted by the crisis.

As you can see from the chart below, a comparison of online orders for fashion and accessories in the US, UK, France and Italy shows Italy lagging behind.

Alex Timlin, senior VP of verticals at Emarsys, who has been analysing the data said: “Italy is a world leader in fashion, and as such it’s no surprise that the industry has been hit hard by the recent lockdown — even online.

“Now, as consumer confidence grows, we are starting to see a steady recovery in the Italian fashion market. Brands that would have sold in-store are also switching online, with e-commerce orders back on the rise. If this trend continues it could be good news for the Italian economy, but there’s still a very long way to go before the market gets back on its feet.”

The trends were identified via the Covid-19 Commerce Insight joint project between Emarsys and GoodData. Their ccinsight platform provides an anonymised, daily view of more than 1 billion engagements and 400 million transactions in more than 100 countries.