Measured in value, China, European Union, and India remained the top three exporters of textiles in 2016. Altogether, these top three accounted for 65.9 percent of world exports in 2016, slightly down from 66.5 percent in 2015, which is mostly due to India’s shrinking market shares.

The United States remained the fourth top textile exporter in 2016, accounting for 4.6 percent of the shares (down from 4.8 percent in 2015).Over half of the top ten exporters experienced a decline in the value of their exports in 2016, with the highest declines seen in Hong Kong (-13 percent), Taiwan (-8 percent), South Korea (-6 percent) and the United States (-6 percent). Notably, Vietnam entered the world’s top ten textile exporters for the first time (2 percent market shares, 9 percent growth rate from 2015).

Top three exporters of apparel include China, the European Union, and Bangladesh. Altogether, they accounted for 69.1 percent of world exports, close to 70.3 percent in 2015. Among the top ten exporters of apparel, increases in export values were recorded by Cambodia (+6 percent), Bangladesh (+6 percent), Vietnam (+5 percent), and European Union (+4 percent). Other leading exporters saw stagnation in their export values (such as Turkey) or recorded a decline (such as China, India, and Indonesia).

Could be negatively affected by the rising labor and production cost, China’s shares in the world textile exports dropped from 37.4 percent in 2015 to 37.2 percent in 2016, and the shares in the world apparel exports fell from 39.2 percent in 2015 to 36.4 percent in 2016—a record low since 2010.

Measured in value, the European Union, the United States, and China were the top three importers of textiles in 2016. These top three altogether accounted for 38 percent of world textile imports, slightly up from 37 percent in 2015, but remains much lower than over 53 percent back in 2000. Notably, over the past decade, apparel manufacturing continues to shift from developed to developing countries and many developing countries heavily rely on imported textile inputs due to the lack of local manufacturing capacity. This explains why more textile exports now go to the developing nations.

On the other hand, affected by consumers’ purchasing power (often measured by GDP per capita) and size of the population, the European Union, the United States, and Japan remained the top three importers of apparel in 2016. Altogether, these top three accounted for 62.9 percent of world apparel imports in 2016, up from 59 percent in 2015. Notably, China is quickly becoming one of the world’s top apparel importers. From 2010 to 2016, China’s apparel imports enjoyed an annual 17 percent growth, much higher than most other countries.

Globalization has brought out global Textile and Clothing manufacturing bases to the developing countries. But every country or locality has their own traditional bases in a certain format. Many developed countries particularly in Europe was trying to keep intact their traditional bases along with some modern fashion and design based additions. Portugal was not different from them. In addition as they were comparatively competitive in terms of cost of utilities and man power in compared to neighboring countries, they still hold some mainstream retail brands’ manufacturing support activities.

10% of all portuguese exports;
20% do Emprego da Indústria Transformadora;
8% do Volume de Negócios da Indústria Transformadora;
9% da Produção da Indústria Transformadora.

According to Statista the Household consumption expenditure on clothing in Portugal from 2008 to 2016 (in million euros). In 2016, spending on clothing in Portugal amounted to approximately 5.93 billion euros.

The expected revenue of the Portuguese market in the “Fashion” segments amounts to € 746 million in 2018.
Revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2018-2022) of 11.6 % resulting in a projected market volume of € 1.158 million in 2022.
The market’s largest contributor is the the “Clothing” with a market volume of € 455 million in 2018.

In Portugal, the most important retailers are: