FITA INSIGHTS

Summer Shopping is Back

Whitney Buha

Oct 20, 2021

4 min read

Last year, Covid changed the way we shopped for summer clothes, but as the world begins to resume some normalcy, we see that people are eager to buy “going out” clothes again.

Summer is finally here and the world is ready for it. As more and more regions begin to reopen, we imagine that shopping trends will change. The beginning of the pandemic brought an influx in the purchase of athletic wear. However, as the world begins to reopen and travel restrictions are lifted, we predict that the purchases of comfort wear, like athleisure, will decrease and typical summer items, like dresses, rompers, and shorts, will increase.

To prove our theory, we looked to our analytics tool, Fit Intelligence. Fit Intelligence aggregates data from our 200+ retail partners to provide insight into trending items. When we explored the data, we found several products that are typically hot sellers in the summer have seen large increases in purchases. While this might not be very surprising, we didn’t see these same trends last year with the world on lockdown. We contribute this to the fact that people are ready to get out of the house and return to some type of normalcy. The warm weather brings outdoor activities, vacations, celebrations, weddings, and more – which all warrant the purchase of new summer clothing.

Shopping for Vacation

Outdoor activities and vacations are big shopping opportunities. When we think of vacationing, we think swimsuits, kimonos, shorts, dresses, rompers, floral prints, and more. With those items in mind, we looked at the data around the buying trends of each. We found that there were increases in purchases for all categories from March through May 2021. Rompers realized increases of 88%, 32%, and 27% respectively. Shorts also saw impressive spikes at 61%, 33%, and 26% from March to May.

Wedding Season Trends

Another popular summer shopping occasion is wedding season, which typically kicks off in May. With wedding season we expect to see the purchase of formal dresses and other types of dresses increase. A lot of weddings were postponed or cancelled last year due to the pandemic, but with less restrictions this year, several more weddings are taking place. Wedding season is back and so are the shopping habits that come with it. The purchases of formal dresses increased by 129%, 19%, and 162% from March to May 2021. As we get further into the summer, we expect that these spikes will continue.

Non-Summer Items Tank

While summer items are spiking, some of the comfort clothing that performed extremely well last year are declining. We saw leggings consistently increase in purchases last year but this year, as we head into the summer months, legging purchases have decreased. From March to May 2021, the purchases of leggings declined by -2%, -15%, and -6% respectively. However, last year from March to May, legging purchases increased by 7%, 61%, and 2%.

Returning to Normalcy

Overall, it appears that people are ready to get back to the way things were before the pandemic – and their shopping habits prove it! Now that lockdown is coming to an end and restrictions are being lifted in some places, consumers are making purchases for their upcoming summer plans, trips, or weddings – and we expect that to continue through the summer months.

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