If you’d like to do basic analysis on the apparel industry, the US business census has some very interesting statistics. The census is only conducted every five years and it takes a few years to get the data processed, so the latest data available is from 2002. Seven years later, there have been significant changes to the industry, but you can still use the data for order-of-magnitude analysis. Visit the 2002 census page for Apparel Manufacturing (NAICS 315) or the page for Clothing Stores (NAICS 4481) for all of the details. Following are a few highlights.
By number of manufacturers, the apparel industry is dominated by small companies. Of the 41,000 apparel manufacturers, 68% of them ( 28,000) have no employees " they are single person or family operations. Of these non-employers, average revenues per manufacturer are about $31,000. That’s revenues, not earnings, so the majority of apparel manufacturers are not only small, they are likely part time or hobby projects.
By contrast, manufacturers with employees, of which there are about 13,000, have average revenues ( actually the value of the shipped products ) of $3M, and they have an average of 26 employees. From other data, we can see that the distribution is skewed toward the largest companies: the top 180 companies account for 50% of the industry’s revenue. So while the number of companies favors the small firms, the bulk of revenues go to the largest firms.
On the retail side, there are 91K clothing stores with 1.1M employees. 40% of the stores have no employees, significantly lower than the 62% of non-employers for the whole of the retail trade.
As with the manufacturers, most of the revenue is earned by the largest retailers, with about half of revenue earned by the top 13% of retailers.
While the census statistics are coarse and usually late, there are a few lessons to learn, and, since you’ve already paid for the data with your taxes, it is worth a look. Look for the 2007 data to be published in March of 2009.
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