It used to be that “casual Fridays” and weekend clothing meant one thing: blue jeans.
But over the last 10 years, trends have been changing and a new category of casual clothes has been gaining ground against denim, especially for women.
This trend has many names with some calling it yoga wear, since it was originally inspired by the emergence of the popularity of yoga. Some now also call the category athletic wear, or performance wear, or even “athleisure”.
This is a different category than the actual athletic wear that is made by Nike and Under Armour. They actually expect you to swim, golf, and run in most of their clothes. They are using athlete-level high performance fabrics and performance enhancing design.
The yoga wear trend is all about consumers buying athletic-looking clothes simply for their fashion style.
People are buying hiking clothes, but they're not going hiking. They want sweaters that dancers wear to and from the dance studio, but they haven't taken a dance class since they were 8.
The Yoga Pant That Started it All
The athletic wear trend really started to take off with specialty retailer lululemon and its popular $100 yoga pant. Originally intended for doing yoga, women adopted it as casual wear over the last decade and it became de rigueur for women to wear around town even when they weren't in the gym or yoga studio.
Suddenly, yoga pants were “in” and acceptable attire. Then came the explosion of matching jackets and tops for a complete “yoga-inspired” outfit.
It's a Big Market
How fast is it growing?
Yoga itself is only growing in the low single digits a year in the United States but yoga wear clothing and accessories is growing in the double digits.
Since 2013, sales of jeans have dropped 6% but retail analysts expect the athletic wear market to rise by almost 50% to a $80 billion to $100 billion market by 2020.
It's important for investors to realize that with a $80 billion to $100 billion market, athletic wear is plenty big enough to support several companies in the space. There isn't going to be just one winner.
