The Clothing Retailing in Europe report series covers the 19 leading economies of Western Europe. In total these countries account for around 98% of all European retail sales, excluding Russia. The remaining ten countries are either too small (eg Luxembourg) or are not sufficiently well developed to warrant detailed coverage (eg Romania and Bulgaria). These developing countries plus Russia and Turkey are covered in the Mintel report on Emerging Markets, 2007. We have produced Major Profiles of 16 top clothing retailing groups in Europe. For many countries we also include smaller profiles (40 in total) on other significant players, both domestic and foreign as relevant.

The data in its entirety is contained in the single copy 19-country report, which gives a full overview of clothing retailing in Europe. Single country reports are also available for the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

The focus of the reports is the clothing specialists, because these are the dominant players in the sector.

The clothing sector faces major challenges:

Competition from non-specialists such as hypermarkets and department stores is keeping prices low.

Inflationary pressures on core areas across Europe are hitting the consumer’s ability to spend on discretionary areas.

An expected downturn in consumer confidence across Europe will intensify competition for share of consumer spend.