This is part six of a multi-part series. The next installments will be published in the coming weeks. You can read the entire series here.
For part six of our SNEWS Retailer Survey results, we’re taking a peek at 2020 sales of women’s apparel, as reported by dozens of retailers across all regions of the country.
In our survey, as with men’s apparel, we divided women’s apparel into two categories: technical wear, which covers performance gear, and sportswear, which includes items toward the lifestyle end of the apparel spectrum.
How we collected our data
As with the rest of our survey, we didn’t supply a list of responses for retailers to choose from. The results you see below all came from write-ins.
Also as usual: The numbers here reflect the percentages of respondents who actually answered each question. Some respondents declined to answer one or both of the questions in our women’s apparel category. These omissions were not included in the calculation of vote percentages.
Finally—and perhaps most important—survey responses were gathered with the promise of anonymity to ensure the collection of the most accurate possible data from retailers.
Best-selling brands: Women’s technical apparel
The results in the women’s category were strikingly similar to the men’s, with a couple of key differences.
Again, we found one big winner in the category. Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, that company was Patagonia, which has emerged as a category winner more times than any other brand in our survey results so far.
Patagonia completely dominated the women’s technical category—even more so than it did in the men’s technical category last week—capturing 40.6 percent the vote.
Second place went to The North Face at 14.1 percent, with Outdoor Research coming in third at 9.4 percent.
These results are quite similar to the men’s category, which also had Patagonia as the winner and The North Face in the top three. Though it seems men prefer Arc’teryx at a slightly higher percentage when it comes to technical wear, while women tend to opt for Outdoor Research.
Patagonia: 40.6 percent
The North Face: 14.1 percent
Outdoor Research: 9.4 percent
The rest of the named brands included Bontrager, Burton, Fjallraven, Flylow, Kuhl, Marmot, Obermeyer, Ortovox, Pearl Izumi, Prana, Rab, Specialized, and Stio.
Best-selling brands: Women’s sportswear
Just like last week, Patagonia swept this category as well, bringing in over a third of the vote. Here, however, the vote share for Patagonia was slightly lower than it was in the men’s sportswear category.
Also of note: Only one brand—KUHL—put up any kind of fight for second place in the men’s sportswear category last week (drawing 17.4 percent of the vote), whereas in the women’s category we have two: prAna, which captured 13.2 percent , and KUHL, which nabbed 10.3 percent.
Patagonia: 35.3 percent
prAna: 13.2 percent
Kuhl: 10.3 percent
Others in this category included Black Diamond, Bontrager, Carve Design, Columbia, Dovetail, Free Fly, Kari Raa, Marmot, Royal Robbins, The North Face, and Toad&Co.
