Area Studi Mediobanca presents Focus on Fashion

The growth trend in the fashion sector in Italy continues: with aggregate sales of €70.4bn in 2017, the industry accounted for 1.3% of Italian GDP. In the past five years both aggregate turnover and employment have increased, by 28.9% and 19.7% respectively, with average annual growth in sales of 6.6%. Exports continue to gain in importance, accounting for 63% of the turnover.

These are some of the highlights to emerge from the new edition of the Mediobanca Research Area’s survey on the fashion industry, presented today in conjunction with the 1st Fashion Annual Talk.

Among the various segments, the most important is clothing, which accounts for 40.5% of total revenues, leatherwear (20.9%) and eyewear (16.2%), while the fastest-growing is jewellery, which has an annual average growth rate of 13.3%.

Italy is becoming an increasingly important presence in the European fashion industry, with fifteen out of the European 43 giants Italian. Luxottica and Prada stand out in particular, ranking seventh and fourteenth respectively in the European rankings by total sales. The French companies are still larger in size, however, with LVMH alone turning over €42.6bn.

The survey also contains a comparison between the top fifteen Italian companies and the other 148 analysed: despite their enormous competitive advantage, the distance between the top fifteen and the rest of the pack is narrowing, leading to a roughly equal distribution between leaders and followers in terms of net profits (56.2% vs 43.8%).

The full survey is available for download from: https://www.mbres.it/