Menswear from Italy notes growth

Italy: Italian fashion and textile industry federation Sistema Moda Italia (SMI) has said that Italian menswear market noted a modest 0.9 per cent revenue growth in the year 2016, reaching almost € 9 billion. Earlier in 2015, the revenue rose by 1.4 per cent.

The value of production is expected to recover as against 2015, reaching a growth of 1.2 per cent. The report estimates an increase in foreign sales of 1.9 per cent corresponding to almost € 5.8 billion.

SMI also predicted that 2017 will began weakly for Italian menswear – initial Spring/Summer 2017 orders are down both domestically (- 4.3per cent) and internationally (- 3.4per cent). Despite this, the companies within the SMI panel display a cautious optimism for 2017; 86 per cent of them expect a “stable” economic situation compared to 2016, while the remaining 14 per cent hope for an improved market performance.

Adding to that, Milan’s Chamber of Commerce states that in 2016 foreign sales of clothing and accessory products (both men’s and women’s) for the Lombardy capital grew by 8 per cent € 5 billion. Including all of Lombardy, which has 14,000 fashion companies, exports surpassed € 9 billion over the first nine months of the year; this 4.7 per cent increase is four times greater than the overall growth rate of Italian exports of 1.2 per cent.