Weak domestic demand, weak consumption, restricting the development of Japanese apparel retail
A combination of factors led to downturn of Japan’s textile and apparel consumption. Japan is one of the world’s leading textile and apparel traditional retail market, but compared to the United States, the European Union, China and other regions, its textile retail market is highly dependent on foreign countries, its own textile market volume is relatively limited. In addition, after the collapse of the bubble economy, Japan’s textile market has been in a state of weak demand after the outbreak of the epidemic, and the development of textile and apparel consumption has stagnated. Although the Japanese government is also working through a series of measures, such as the implementation of a supplementary budget to issue cash subsidies to stimulate economic development and boost consumption, but the main benefited areas are machinery and equipment, medicine and health, fuel and energy, including the retail sales of consumer goods for daily use textile(including clothing and apparel) is still no improvement.
Lack of growth momentum, Japan’s clothing and textile retail recovery is difficult
Compared with the “big ups and downs” in Europe and the United States textile retail market, Japan’s textile market, although also experienced the epidemic at the beginning of the “April plunge”, but its initial decline or late rebound, the degree of change is relatively mild.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan published monthly data on textile and apparel retail sales show that in 2020 the world’s major retail markets were most affected in April, Japan’s textile market monthly retail sales of clothing and apparel fell by a maximum of 54.1% year-on-year, much lower than the 87% in the United States and 78% in the European Union. However, a year later, in April 2021, retail sales of textile and apparel products in Japan rebounded to grow by only 63.3% year-on-year, driven by both economic recovery and a low base, while both Europe and the US saw strong year-on-year growth (764.6% in the US and 130% in the EU). In terms of sales amount, the annual retail sales of Japanese clothing and apparel in 2021 was 8.6 trillion yen, also much lower than the 11 trillion yen for the whole year of 2019 before the epidemic, and the lack of recovery in the textile market is obvious.
In fact, looking at the development trend of Japan’s textile market in the past 10 years, it is easy to see that the consumption of textile and apparel as a proportion of the overall retail consumption in Japan has shown a slow decline year by year. Catalyzed by the epidemic, Japanese local consumers have repeatedly reduced the desire to buy clothing and apparel. Japan’s textile consumption recovery lack of momentum, rich difficult.
