Top Themes in Retail and Apparel in 2025 – Strategic Intelligence

Retail and Apparel Strategic Intelligence Report Overview

The retail and apparel thematic intelligence report identifies the top 9 themes that will impact the retail and apparel sector’s growth in the coming years. For each theme, the report offers a series of predictions, identifies winners and losers, and points one to further reading. Moreover, the report assesses how well companies are positioned for the future based on their competitive position in the main themes that are disrupting their sector.

Retail and Apparel - Top Themes

The top themes analyzed in the report are:

• International Trade
• The Changing Role of Stores
• Opportunities Online
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Geopolitics
• ESG
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Social Media
• Resale

International Trade: Trump’s election will be the main factor bringing many changes to international trade in 2025 due to the ‘America First’ policies he will enact, worsening the trade war with China. Moreover, retailers are likely to be forced to diversify their supply chains to other popular production countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Turkey, or even to create localized strategies by basing production in the US or neighboring Mexico. These changes would not only alleviate tariff pressures but also address the risks of overreliance on a single country for manufacturing.

The Changing Role of Stores: In the post-COVID era, stores and in-store shopping have proven more popular with consumers than retailers had anticipated. However, the role that stores play in the consumer shopping journey is changing and will continue to be a major point of investment for retailers in 2025. This ranges from the role that stores play in an omnichannel shopping journey, to consumers wanting in-store experiences that go beyond just purchasing products.

Consumers’ expectations of how stores operate are also rising, therefore, the efficiency and overall experience within an in-store shopping journey can make or break retailers. Features such as efficient click-and-collect options, digitalized checkouts that make purchasing faster and reduce queues, and in-store tech such as in-store apps can aid the overall equity of a brand or retailer if the consumer has a positive experience.

Opportunities Online: Despite many consumers being keen to visit stores, the online channel is still set to see significant growth. Two of the biggest recent developments in the online channel are the rise of q-commerce and marketplace models. Q-commerce has the greatest potential in the food and grocery sector due to the demand for convenience and the urgent nature of many purchases. Although this trend started with a boom in specialized q-commerce companies during the pandemic, many of these collapsed and the developments have since been led by grocers, both by investing in their capabilities and through third parties.

Retail and Apparel Theme Map, 2025

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Scope

GlobalData provides detailed insight into the omnichannel theme, specifically focusing on its impact on the retail and apparel sectors. The report provides an overview of omnichannel and its components, the leading companies, the timeline of developments in the omnichannel theme, and related mergers and acquisitions. The report also details the relevant trends across technology, macroeconomics, and retail trends.

Key Highlights

• Macroeconomic conditions during the post-COVID era have so far been defined by persistently high levels of inflation. The fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced food and fuel prices up as supply has been restricted, while elevated savings levels have pushed up the level of core inflation, due to elevated consumer spending power stimulating total demand in the economy. Whilst high inflation has been persistent over the past two years, it has started to ease, and we expect it to continue to ease across most markets in 2024.
• While artificial intelligence (AI) has been used by retailers for some time for tasks such as inventory management and forecasting, advances have been made in other areas such as personalized marketing, customer service, price optimization, and supply chain management. As e-commerce continues to become more popular and data-driven and decision-making becomes more important, the implementation of AI in retail will accelerate in the coming years.
• In an environment of low growth, rising costs, and lower margins owing to high inflation, non-essential consumer spend has fallen as consumers make less frequent purchases and are trading down. As this limits retailers’ ability to achieve organic sales growth, they must look to other means of increasing their revenue and consumer base. Mergers & acquisitions (M&A) can be a key way of achieving this, and it can also help retailers achieve economies of scale to help counteract rising operating costs.

Reasons to Buy

• Themes are disruptive, so it’s easy to be blindsided by industry outsiders who invade your sector. Understanding the themes ecosystem will get you ahead of the curve.
• Understand the important themes in 2024 and beyond, allowing you to grasp a wider view of changes in consumer behavior and how they will impact your markets.
• Explore how emerging themes in retail are allowing industry leaders to evolve, so you can better position yourself for long-term success.
• An easy-to-use framework for tracking themes across all companies in all sectors.
• Companies who invest in the right themes become success stories; those who miss the big themes end up as failures.