Amazon, grocery retailers leverage private brand apparel

An article on Bloomberg.com today emphasized that private brand apparel now outsells any single apparel brand, with Amazon.com and a number of grocery retailers, from Walmart to The Kroger Co., foraying into fashionable own-brand clothing lines.  

In the active wear segment, private brands account for 20 percent of the market, the article stated, noting that millennials in particular tend not to care about logos. “They will buy anything from anywhere at any price point, and that is a big change,” Adheer Bahulkar, a partner at consulting firm A.T. Kearney, is quoted as saying.

Although U.S. grocery retailers such as Cincinnati-based The Kroger Co. are just beginning to delve into private brand clothing, Asda in the United Kingdom first sold an exclusive clothing line in 1990 and the Canadian retailer Loblaw Cos. followed suit in 2004, according to the article.