The total wholesale value of the branded athletic footwear market reached $46,515 million in 2013 compared to $44,462 million the prior year, considerably aided by the big boost in Nike’s U.S. basketball business. That helped overcome the two major downdrafts in the market: An ongoing inventory glut in China and currency issues that hurt reported sales from a number of Emerging markets. The sneaker market easily outpaced the growth in the global athletic apparel market, which rose just 1.8% to $73,692 million from $72,356 million. The global sports equipment market was up 2.9% to $67,289 million from $65,398 million.
Our annual study of the wholesale market relies primarily on publicly available data of the major sneaker companies. Most of the sales are stated at wholesale value, although the major brands do include the retail value of footwear sales in their numbers, so the equivalent wholesale value is perhaps overstated by about 7-8% taking into account a roughly 15-20% DTC business at a 50% gross margin. All data is compiled in local currencies and converted into US$ at the average OECD rate for the year. As always, we list companies with all their athletic brand sales. Acquisitions over the years have made this somewhat tricky. We chose to include Timberland with VF, though an argument could certainly be made that Timberland is more of a lifestyle brand. We feel, on balance, that we are giving a picture of the major multi-brand players in athletic-inspired footwear.
