The sale of clothes through clothing stores is tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau by type of store: men’s clothing, women’s clothing and family clothing. In the year 2000 men’s clothing stores accounted for 9% of the category and fell to 6% by 2009. Women’s clothing stores also saw its share decline as a percent of the category from 29% in 2000 to 26% in 2009. More of us are buying our clothes at general merchandising stores and clothes stores that sell a fuller line of apparel, family clothing stores.

Today’s market size is the estimated total of sales by clothing stores in the United States in 2000 and 2009. These sales totals do not include retailers categorized under the heading general merchandisers, including department stores and warehouse clubs.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2000 and 2009
Market size: $118.2 billion and $152.3 billion respectively
Source: “Estimated Annual Sales of U.S. Retail and Food Service Firms by Kind of Business: 1998 Through 2009,” Annual Retail Trade Survey—2009, available in a PDF format here. For links to these data as well as earlier U.S. Annual Trade Survey data, check this Census Bureau site.
Original source: U.S. Bureau of the Census
Posted on October 13, 2011