Denim goes head to head with lycra: jeans giants grow despite the rise of athleisure

Leggins don’t only live through women. Despite the rise of athleisure, denim giants stand. Following the period of 2015 and 2016, which were struggling years for the sector, the latest years show that the recovery of the leaders of the cowboy industry, such as Levi’s, Guess or the PVH group, is already a certainty.

The casualization of fashion, the same which appealed to the leggings, has also been the main revulsion for the comeback of jeans. Levi Strauss, the largest group in the sector, began its recovery back in 2016, with increases of 1.2% in 2016 and 7.8% in 2017. In 2018, the group’s revenue stood at 5.5 billion dollars, up 13.7% than the previous year, and made a profit of 285 million dollars, a 1.4% increase. The rush of denim also contributed to the company’s decision to return to the stock market in March 2019.

Guess began its recovery in 2017 with 2.1 million dollars in revenue. In 2018, the company grew 7.9% and in 2019, it saw another increase of 10.4%. In addition, the group’s losses disappeared in 2019 with profits of 14.1 million dollars.

The latest years show that the recovery of leaders of the cowboy industry such as Levi’s, Guess or the PVH group, is already a certainty

The PVH group, which controls Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, also ended its last fiscal years on good notes, though at the cost of its profitability. This last pointer began to recover in 2018, which saw an increase of 38.7%.

The growth in the division also motivated the VF group to split its denim brands to a new company, Kontoor Brands, in 2018, which still does not consolidated data.

The development of the sector is also transported to large distributions, although the concerned groups do not detail the evolution of their revenues per category. Weekday, H&M’s specialized denim chain, is the third-largest in the group by revenue. In the case of Gap, Old Navy is the label that has best evolved of the group, which even led it to consider a spin-off that finally failed to occur.

And jean doesn’t only survive because of denim: according to an Edited study, outerwear denim sales doubled between 2016 and 2018. In the case of pants, the growth of its popularity also led to a greater diversity of models, although mom jeans and nineties style have a better positioning for the upcoming years.