Apparel is one of the most popular retail ecommerce product categories, and online sales are growing faster than offline.
A recent Morgan Stanley report predicted that Amazon will become the top US apparel retailer in 2018, after growing its market share by 1.5% last year. It's true that online retailers and off-price stores have hit the traditional channel for apparel—department stores—hard. Per Morgan Stanley, department stores will account for just 8% of the apparel market by 2022, down from 24% in 2006.
eMarketer projects that US retail ecommerce sales of apparel and accessories will increase 14.5% to $103.66 billion in 2018, making up 19.7% of total retail ecommerce sales. That makes it the largest single product category, with $26.01 billion more in sales than the next category, consumer electronics. Apparel's digital growth will slow to 12.5% in 2022, when sales are expected to hit $170.52 billion. For comparison, overall US apparel sales shrunk 2% in 2017, per The NPD Group.