Earnings season has been tough on athletic apparel brands. From Lululemon to Nike to Adidas, the sector has seen widespread earnings misses, due in large part to global supply chain issues.
Athleisure is one area that’s been a bright spot. In the past 12 months, we’ve seen the following deals:
- Spanx was valued at $1.2 billion after Blackstone bought a majority stake.
- Vuori received a $400 million investment from SoftBank that values the clothing company at $4 billion.
- L Catterton-backed Sweaty Betty sold to Wolverine Worldwide for $410 million.
The athleisure market is anticipated to grow to $549 billion by 2028 — and that’s not accounting for emerging sub-trends within the space.
Athflow — the convergence of athleisure and luxury — was one of the top trends in Pinterest’s 2021 business report.
Tactical sports fashion is on the rise, too. At the end of 2020, On Running’s Cloud X trainer ranked ninth on fashion search engine List — the first time any tactical fitness item had appeared on the index. Since then, each quarterly index has included tactical fitness apparel.
Want to learn more about this half-trillion dollar market? Check out Front Office Sports Insights.
