Ecommerce Fashion Industry in 2026: Statistics, Trends and Strategies

The fashion and apparel industry continues to demonstrate its dominant position in ecommerce. The sector has achieved a remarkable $997 billion market value—a number projected to exceed $1.6 trillion by 2030.

Still, fashion retailers face many macroeconomic headwinds: inflation, customer demands, and rising costs. Ecommerce fashion brands must now navigate these complex market conditions while adapting to evolving consumer preferences. 

That makes growth harder to manage: brands are balancing more channels, more customer expectations, and more operational complexity at the same time. Getting it right means connecting the customer experience with the systems behind it—from merchandising and marketing to payments, fulfillment, and returns. 

This guide shares the ecommerce trends, fashion statistics, and strategies shaping the industry this year—and what they mean for brands trying to stay competitive.

Ecommerce fashion in 2026: The quick snapshot

Total fashion ecommerce sales are expected to tip $957.31 billion this year. Here’s a closer look at some figures across the fashion industry:

• In 2025, just over a quarter of all fashion sales took place online. 
• Sales of apparel, footwear, and retail accessories are projected to rise 6.5% this year to total almost $250 billion.
• Global revenue from luxury fashion is forecast to exceed $169.8 billion by 2029.
• The fashion industry has some of the highest online revenue per visit figures: $3.29 for activewear, $2.74 for active footwear, and $2.73 for handbags and luggage.

Key stats shaping strategy this year

These data points highlight the forces shaping fashion ecommerce strategy in 2026:

• Artificial intelligence: A recent McKinsey report found apparel, footwear, jewelry, and accessories to be the second-most popular category for consumers to use AI to research. Nearly half of all shoppers rely on AI tools for discovery and inspiration, including ideas on what to buy next.
• Returns pressure: Roughly 19.3% of all online sales were projected to be returned in 2025. In fashion ecommerce, some of those returns will be the result of “wardrobing”—the act of wearing an item (with tags) and then returning it for a full refund. Some 46% of US shoppers aged between 18 and 34 admit to this type of return fraud.
• Social and video attention: Adults spend roughly one hour per day browsing social networks like Facebook. This jumps significantly when video-first platforms are in the mix: people spend 2.5 hours a day on average across YouTube and TikTok. 
• Tariffs: Tariffs are the number one hurdle fashion brands face in 2026, according to McKinsey—but 25% believe industry conditions will improve.

Top ecommerce fashion trends for 2026

1. Social commerce and shoppable content
2. Unified shopping experiences
3. Personalized customer journey
4. AI for operations and creative
5. AI product discovery and agentic shopping
6. Returns and fit as a profitability strategy
7. The rise of resale
8. Digital payments as a growth driver
9. AR try-on and immersive shopping
10. Sustainability—with caveats
11. Community through IRL experiences
12. Business model diversification

1. Social commerce and shoppable content

Social media platforms play an integral role in many fashion brands’ ecommerce strategies. That’s hardly surprising—the typical social media user now spends nearly 2 1/2 hours a day on social platforms.

Platforms like TikTok and Instagram can contribute to sales for large fashion brands by allowing online shoppers to visualize the product on a real person—especially when products are promoted by creators customers already trust.

Social commerce sales are expected to account for 17.21% of total ecommerce sales this year. But social media is no longer a place for shoppers to just learn about new fashion trends; it’s also a place for shoppers to buy as they learn, through in-app, integrated shopping experiences. 

This shortens the line between influencer product promotion and an actual purchase, right inside the apps where customers are already engaged, such as Instagram, TikTok Shop, Meta, buyable pins on Pinterest, and more. 

Newer to the social selling sphere, TikTok Shop’s integrated shopping journeys show particular potential, providing access to the platform’s more than 100 million users. Sales on the platform grew by 108% over the past year, with analysts estimating $20 billion in sales in 2026.

Fashion businesses like Princess Polly are leaning in:

Get started: TikTok Shop is easier to connect to your commerce stack through Shopify. The free TikTok app integration helps you easily create videos, track conversions, and optimize campaigns through instant data reporting. 

That’s just one app among many in the Shopify App Store that help fashion retailers test and activate new selling channels without a long development cycle. As social selling channels evolve, the ability to pivot your tech, selling, and marketing strategy quickly is key. As social channels become sales channels, brands need systems that can connect marketing, checkout, and fulfillment without adding complexity.

2. Unified shopping experiences

With more pressure on retailers than ever to grow, and just as many headwinds to navigate, it’s important to show up on every channel your customers use—including the traditional ones. 

As Shopify president Harley Finkelstein says, it’s about showing up everywhere that makes sense. “The future of commerce has no channels at all. It's an invisible thread woven seamlessly through every aspect of consumers' lives. The old world was about being everywhere; the new world is about being exactly where your customer needs you, exactly when they need you, in a way that feels completely organic.”

“To do that,” Harley continues, “you need to remove the toil of a legacy technology system. That starts with a unified core platform so you can do what you’re best at in a more meaningful way.”

Unified commerce is an excellent way for fashion retailers to create stronger return on ad spend (ROAS)—but it’s also about the entire shopping experience, which should be about “meeting the customers where they are,” says Kal Stephen, head of enterprise, Lifestyle Vertical at Shopify. 

“It's the responsibility of the brand to make sure that they're showing up wherever their customer is: physical, digital, social, and more.”

One key way to achieve this is by providing instant recognition with a unified customer data platform that creates a single view of the customer. Wherever the customer leaves a mark, that information is captured in one place, then analyzed and fed to each arm of the marketing and sales workflows to better bring customers into the funnel. This same visibility can also support inventory and fulfillment decisions across channels. That includes:

• Preferred sizes and colors
• Purchase history
• Returned items
• Loyalty program status 
• Previous support tickets

Shopify POS helps create a seamless bridge between physical retail and online channels by unifying every aspect of the retail operation. 

When Shop Pay customers shop in-store, they’re instantly recognized so retail associates can customize their experience. For those customers who are not on Shop Pay, Shopify POS still captures their data at checkout, helping to turn the “data abyss” of the physical store into one that is data-rich and ripe for retargeting, marketing, and engagement online. 

OAK + Fort migrated to Shopify and integrated Shopify POS after consulting with leading integrator EY to power their upmarket journey. The result has been a unified commerce experience, better clothing inventory management, seamless payment, and much richer sales data that helps the company forecast demand, check inventory levels, and replenish with speed—especially during promotional periods. 

Platform and data unification create better operational experiences on the back end, which translate into better customer experiences on the front end. The unified approach drives business growth, with retailers seeing an average 8.9% increase in gross merchandise value (GMV) when using Shopify POS for unified commerce. 

“The time is now, don’t wait. If I could do anything differently … we would’ve been on Shopify way sooner,” says Jennifer Pearson, VP of IT and ecom solutions at OAK + FORT.

3. Personalized customer journey 

Unifying data across channels allows brands to give customers more personalized experiences based on their previous engagements. That matters because 81% of customers say they prefer brands that offer personalized shopping experiences that anticipate customer needs.

According to Kal, “We're in an environment where customers want things when they want them, and there's very little compromise on that. People who are buying fashion items, apparel, and accessories are showing up everywhere—and they want the right product recommended to them at the right time.”

Showing a shopper items they were previously interested in or retargeting them based on their interactions with your ecommerce website provides a more tailored online shopping experience.

That said, too much personalization can feel creepy, hence why just 1 in 5 US consumers trust retailers to use their data responsibly. Almost 2 in 5 baby boomers wouldn’t share their data under any circumstances. 

The use of third-party data has been a large driver of this perception. “That’s finally changing, with third-party data falling to the wayside in favor of zero- and first-party data collected via methods like:

• Website forms
• Click data
• Support conversations
• Loyalty programs
• Newsletter sign-ups

For fashion retailers, that shift creates a stronger foundation for customer profiles, segmentation, and lifecycle marketing across channels.

Luxury fashion retailer Diane von Furstenberg has effectively harnessed first-party customer data with Shopify to develop detailed customer profiles on which they build personalized and engaging marketing and shopping experiences. 

“One of our favorite Shopify POS features is adding notes to a customer’s profile to store information like their favorite colors, ideal size, or a product they’re excited about from our new collection,” says assistant store manager Joanna Puccio. “Those qualitative insights really help us really make them feel like we’re their personal stylist the next time they shop with us.”

This data allows in-store associates to follow up with customers post-purchase, referencing previous interactions and preferences—and they do so in a real, human way that demonstrates they are paying attention and care about the customer's experience. This not only enhances customer satisfaction, but also fosters loyalty. 

4. AI for operations and creative

AI is increasingly powering the automation required to scale personalization, marketing, and operations in fashion ecommerce. From virtual assistants that help customers try on clothes, to chatbots and inventory management for fashion ecommerce brands, AI is fast becoming a valuable tool for fashion buyers and sellers.

According to McKinsey, more than 35% of fashion executives are already using generative AI for routine tasks like online customer service, image creation, product discovery, and copywriting. 

With AI, you can instantly reimagine the scenes in a company’s product images in time for the latest holiday season. Or, simply help a customer imagine your product in different spaces. “Say you're selling flip-flops,” says Kal. “You can take an original image shot in a studio and show them on the beach. Then, show them by the pool. Just keep regenerating based on the customer context.”

Similarly, you can help a customer find the perfect outfit based on a look her favorite celebrity is wearing in a photo. Teams can describe the image or video needed to illustrate a point in a blogpost, then have an AI produce it. It’s all already possible, with tools like Shopify Magic. 

Other ideas include:

• Swapping out creative elements of dynamic ads based on what you know about your audience
• Quickly writing accurate and compelling product descriptions
• Better personalizing product landing pages

AI can also assist with marketing automation. Input a simple command like, “Run a 20% off campaign on this pair of flip-flops for two weeks,” and have that deal set up and plugged into your analytics and sales and fulfillment back end, where it will run completely on its own.

Plus, using AI for both predictive and prescriptive insights smooths operations and helps retailers get ahead. These insights can help with inventory and store management, price optimization, and supply chain management, then immediately deliver creative assets for the campaign that’s needed to move that surplus inventory off of shelves.

For fashion retailers operating across multiple channels, this kind of automation helps reduce manual work while improving forecasting and inventory planning at scale.

Read more: Conversion Rate Optimization for Fashion Brands: 2026 Guide

5. AI product discovery and agentic shopping experiences

AI is also changing how customers discover products. Traditional product discovery relied on the customer knowing exactly what they wanted—or at least the exact terms a retailer had used to list the item on their ecommerce site.

Now, AI chatbots can help shoppers find the products they’re most likely to be interested in, and assist throughout the entire checkout process. These chatbots can also be excellent customer service representatives, using first-party customer data to seamlessly help with past purchases.

Artificial intelligence has transformed this experience with:

• Semantic search: Customers now use complex, situational queries like "I’m going to a wedding in Tuscany in July. It’s outdoors, the theme is sunset, and I need shoes I can walk on grass in." AI parses this for climate, occasion, and technical constraints (heel type) to personalize product suggestions.
• Visual discovery: Advanced discovery engines now understand silhouettes and drapes. A user can upload a photo of a vintage ‘90s blazer, and the AI finds modern equivalents that match the cut and structure, not just the color.

For fashion brands, this shift makes product data quality more important than ever. Clean integrations and consistent product information help AI systems surface the right items across shopping experiences.

But it’s not just onsite search that fashion shoppers are using as personal shopping assistants. McKinsey estimates that the US retail market could see up to $1 trillion in orchestrated revenue from agentic commerce in 2030.

Platforms like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini now support agentic commerce. That opens up opportunities for fashion and apparel brands to surface accurate product data within AI conversations, where users can checkout instantly. 

6. Returns and fit as a profitability strategy

Fashion ecommerce is uniquely burdened by returns, which remains one of the biggest cost-drivers. Statista reports that clothing, shoes, and accessories are the most returned online purchases. 

Some fashion retailers are implementing strict return policies as a result. Retail giants like H&M and Urban Outfitters charge customers a small fee to return an item, while British fashion marketplace ASOS took a stricter approach and banned serial returners from making a purchase entirely. 

Brands don’t necessarily need to follow this approach with permanent bans or return fees that risk losing customers when the cost to acquire them is skyrocketing. Instead, prevent fashion returns on product pages before they happen:

• Introduce virtual try-ons, size guides, and product photography to show clothing on different body types to reduce size-related returns. 
• Share fit clarity—for example, “relaxed” or “slim fit”—with the model’s size measurements for reference.
• Publish care expectations to prevent clothing from being damaged and later returned.

Despite these attempts, some returns are inevitable. How you approach the customer’s experience can influence whether fashion shoppers continue purchasing from your brand. A recent UPS report found convenience is king. Some 86% of customers prefer to make a return without boxes or labels, with their refund processed instantly. 

7. The rise of resale

As margins tighten, many fashion brands are exploring new revenue models. Secondhand apparel is becoming a global phenomenon. The resale market is growing three times faster than new apparel, according to BCG. It’s expected to reach a $360 billion market valuation by 2028.

As Kal explains, “Resale in general has taken off because a lot of products—especially in the luxury vertical—are getting more and more expensive. Used and resale products offer a way for brands to sell their product to customers at a lower price point while still offering the advantages of getting customers engaged in entering into their brand.”

Clothing brands have noticed this same trend. Resale—or “recommerce”—is a key strategy for sustainable shoe company Allbirds, whose audience cares about contributing to a circular economy. Thanks to a partnership with Trove, the company is able to offer customers $20 of in-store credit for returning their used shoes, which are then resold on the ReRun platform at a lower price. It’s all about the company’s commitment to creating and upholding a more sustainable fashion economy. 

Recommerce also has clear business and operational benefits, recapturing materials from a sale that would have otherwise taken place on a third-party marketplace. That matters in an economy where every additional revenue channel matters.

For example, Dôen, a California-based premium fashion brand, launched a resale program called Hand Me Dôen. The program allows customers to send in preowned Dôen products in exchange for store credit.

Dôen then hosts flash sales throughout the year when the resold products become available. The goal of not making resale available all the time is to prevent customers from visiting the site and finding it already picked over.

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8. Digital payments as a growth driver

Payment flexibility has become another way to increase conversion rates and average order value in fashion ecommerce. Traditional methods for digital payments like credit cards remain popular, but many newer forms of payment—such as digital wallets, buy now, pay later (BNPL), and cryptocurrency—are on the rise, with BNPL particularly popular among Gen Z and millennials for fashion shopping.

Mobile POS payments in the US alone have grown by 4.3% since 2022, with 17% of consumers using mobile or digital wallets for their most recent in-store transaction. Accordingly, it should come as no surprise that half of people leave their physical wallets at home.

But it’s not just that consumers are using digital payments more. Digital payments have become a platform where consumers begin their shopping journey—particularly in the case of buy now, pay later platforms and offer marketplaces.

It’s important for fashion retailers to consider where they’re meeting their customers, and how and when they’re offering incentives—especially given McKinsey’s finding that users who begin their journeys with BNPL and aggregator marketplaces spend 1.5 to 2 times more than those who begin on a merchant’s online store or app. 

One takeaway for fashion retailers who participate in the digital payments ecosystem is to ensure all rewards are applied cross-channel. A reward offered for an online purchase should be redeemable in-store. Rewards can also be used strategically to motivate consumers to buy cross-channel to help move inventory where it’s lingering. 

BNPL marketplaces and aggregated offer marketplaces are here to stay. It’s worth developing dedicated programs with them and thinking out regular incentives and strategies balanced with your bottom line.

Fast, flexible payments also reduce checkout friction, support global selling, and help brands maintain consistent experiences across sales channels. 

9. AR try-on and immersive shopping 

New shopping technologies are helping customers feel more confident before purchasing, especially in categories like apparel where fit and style are harder to judge online. As virtual reality becomes more accessible in homes and VR headsets grow in popularity, more fashion brands are making it possible to shop virtually. An estimated 28% of US consumers use this type of technology when buying online, with usage higher amongst Gen Z at 41%.

One popular method is through virtual fitting rooms—an easy way for consumers to shop for items from the comfort of their own homes, like with a virtual shoe or accessory try-on. 

AI-powered software like True Fit helps customers virtually find the right fit, solving a huge pain point for online fashion retailers. Shopify retailer Frye, for example, takes advantage of True Fit’s software to help customers find the right shoe size the first time, helping to drastically reduce returns and exchanges.

Activewear brand Alo Yoga also created its own virtual shop for the Meta Quest 2 VR headset, giving customers an immersive shopping experience. Not only can customers shop virtually, giving them the ability to try on different styles right from home using their VR headset, but they can also stream wellness tutorials and attend workout classes.

10. Sustainability—with caveats 

Sustainability has been a hot topic in the fashion industry for years now. But when it comes to consumer demand, ideals don’t always live up to behavior.

While 74% of shoppers say they are willing to pay more for sustainably produced goods, value tends to trump sustainability. Consumers want sustainable products, but they also want affordability and still consume fast fashion, with retailers like Temu and Shein ranking as the top online fashion marketplaces in the US.

It’s not just consumer wallets at the heart of this—it’s also brand perception. In a 2020 study of Spanish fashion consumers, respondents cited a “lack of trust in companies and their sustainable statements” as “the main reason preventing them from buying sustainable products or doing it more often.”

Taken together, this indicates that consumers are savvy to greenwashing, that they only want sustainability they can trust, and even then, that they’ll only complete a purchase if the price is right.

For fashion brands, sustainability has become a balancing act between responsible sourcing, supply-chain complexity, and maintaining competitive pricing.

Get started: Shopify Collective offers a unique opportunity to balance sustainability with affordability by enabling seamless collaboration with established sustainable brands. 

Fashion retailers can test new sustainable products without inventory investment through Collective’s automated dropshipping system, while suppliers can expand their reach through trusted retail partners. This reduces your overall carbon footprint by eliminating the need for multiple warehousing steps and enabling more efficient direct-to-consumer shipping. You’ll expand your catalog without the risk of holding inventory.

“Through Shopify Collective, the initial sync of the content from the brands PDPs was flawless, enabling us the opportunity to enhance the customer experience by incorporating our own editorialized imagery,” says Brooke Konzelmann, head of partnerships and PR at Bala, who recorded 45% of total sales coming from net new customers after the implementation of Collective.

11. Community through IRL experiences

As competition increases and acquisition costs rise, fashion brands are putting more emphasis on loyalty and long-term customer relationships.

“Gen Z Broke the Marketing Funnel” is the title of a recent Vogue article based on a comprehensive study of both Gen Z and millennial shoppers by the culture research firm, Archrival.

According to the article, “Consumption today is an infinite loop of inspiration, exploration, community, and loyalty.” That’s thanks to near-constant connection on social media, which simultaneously creates a whole lot of noise and strong desire to find retail gold within it.

One key way to find it: building community. According to the study, 54% of Gen Z shoppers prefer brands that make them feel like part of a community—not surprising, given the larger Gen Z trend towards feelings of loneliness. 

IRL popups are a great way to form those initial connections and reactivate them as well. Kal explains, “We're seeing a lot of brands offer more in-person experiences. For example, they're showing up at concerts and sporting events and offering nontransactional experiences to drive loyalty.”

Luggage retailer BÉIS is one such brand that’s experimenting with popup shops. Their goal is to reengage customers by creating a unique shopping experience that they can’t necessarily get in a traditional retail store, and to test out new markets while they’re at it.

Particularly popular are the brand’s bag washes, popups where customers bring their much-loved bags in to be professionally cleaned. Lines are consistently around the block. Even BÉIS’s more traditional popups, meant just to generate sales, are highly successful.

“We see an average 30% increase in traffic during popup activation and an average revenue lift of 10%,” reports BÉIS CEO Adeela Hussain Johnson.

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Shoe brand Steve Madden has also experimented with popups targeted at college students as a way of better reaching that demographic. The brand created a 3D shoebox showroom on college campuses to showcase and sell their products while also gamifying the experience and ensuring shoppers have a great time with the brand.

Students browse through the giant shoebox, purchase shoes, and participate in games, like spinning a wheel to win prizes. 

This has resulted in over:

• 40,000 impressions
• 16,000 engagements
• Five minutes of dwell time per interaction

No matter what your approach, community building, like the entire customer experience, should be both omnichannel and unified. It can increase repeat purchases, strengthen brand differentiation, and help offset rising customer acquisition costs (CAC).

The excitement you generate in person should be followed up online, whether through personal outreach, personalized offers, or online events. Keep your ecommerce fashion brand top of mind while building loyalty to cut through the noise. 

Read more: 15 Fashion Brand Storytelling Examples & Strategies for 2026

12. Diversification of business models 

In an era when growth at any cost has been replaced with the need for profitable growth, diversifying your business channels just makes sense. Many fashion brands are expanding into new channels and business models to stay competitive.

However, when wholesale brands suddenly pivot their focus too heavily to DTC, they risk alienating their wholesale partners, as we saw with the challenges Nike encountered by going all-in with DTC. With the snap of the fingers, a dominant brand left a gaping hole in the wholesale market that competitors eagerly rushed to fill. 

And there are also risks for fashion DTC brands moving too quickly and at too large of a scale into wholesale:

• Largely giving up control of how your brand’s products are marketed and sold, putting more distance between you and your customer
• Going head-to-head with bigger, more established, better-resourced competitors 
• Brand dilution for DTC companies whose very proximity to customers is one of their defining features 

It’s important to find a sweet spot that nurtures both channels without oversaturating the market, viewing DTC and wholesale less as entirely separate strategies, and instead under a single umbrella, executed on multiple channels.

“It's all just a form of commerce where you're engaging with your end-consumer at different touchpoints,” says Kal. “These historically different solutions should now be viewed as a single solution run through different channels. By bringing this all together, brands can then think about growing their overall commerce business.”

Viewed this way, each channel can be tapped for the unique strength it brings: DTC for building relationships with customers, fostering a great customer experience, and building community; and wholesale for strategically expanding reach and brand presence—testing one product or slice of the market at a time.

As brands expand into more channels, unified commerce systems become critical for managing inventory, pricing, customer data, and fulfillment across every touchpoint. 

Affordable swimwear brand Kulani Kinis is a great example of this. With the majority of their success achieved through DTC, the company wanted to expand their wholesale arm with the help of a B2B storefront as intuitive to use as their DTC sites. 

They created an expansion store for wholesale customers through Shopify Plus B2B to offer customized collection pages with sliders for all swimwear, as well as an easy add-to-cart capability, allowing customers to add multiple sizes and large quantities of products to their shopping cart without leaving the collection page. 

The result:

• 300% increase wholesale website transaction revenue
• 3x growth in B2B wholesale customers
• 60% year-on-year growth in B2B wholesale revenue 

This balanced hybrid approach allows fashion brands to enjoy the benefits of both worlds—gaining exposure through wholesale channels while simultaneously fostering a direct connection with consumers. 

Still, as competition heats up, fashion retailers need to think creatively about how to stand out in both DTC and wholesale environments. This might mean offering unique in-store experiences or exclusive product lines to keep wholesale partners engaged and excited. 

“We’re all about branding, appeal and aesthetic, and with Shopify Plus, we’ve been able to make the wholesale store feel like us,” says Alex Babich, managing director and cofounder of Kulani Kinis. “Shopify’s B2B capabilities have given us the cohesive brand experience we wanted and customization options that meet the needs of our wholesale partners. We’re not bound by others’ constraints.”

The company still gets to control their brand experience and own the customer relationship—all right on their highly customized, easy-to-use B2B site.

Ecommerce fashion trends statistics

These statistics highlight the scale, challenges, and opportunities shaping fashion ecommerce in 2026. Together, they show why brands are investing in unified commerce and new business models.

Social commerce

• Social commerce will generate an estimated $919 billion in 2026.
• Revenue from social commerce is projected to grow to over $1.1 trillion by 2029.
• The most popular social commerce platforms in order are: TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
• 50% of Gen Z prefer social media creators over traditional celebrities.

Sustainability

• The fashion industry is responsible for nearly 10% of the global carbon dioxide output. 
• The global sustainable-fashion market is estimated to hit $33.05 billion by 2030.
• 37% of consumers say they’re buying fewer things in a bid to be more environmentally friendly.
• Almost one-quarter of luxury US shoppers say sustainable policies from luxury brands are very important to them.

Personalization

• 69% of consumers are more likely to buy when brands personalize offers as they browse. 
• 81% of customers ignore irrelevant messages.
• 89% of business leaders believe personalization is invaluable to their success.

Artificial intelligence

• The global AI-in-fashion market is expected to hit $4.3 billion by 2027.
• Two-thirds of luxury fashion consumers are already using AI when shopping for fashion online.
• The top two use cases for AI by fashion industry professionals are product discovery/consumer search and personalized marketing.
• 7 in 10 Gen Z shoppers have expressed an interest in AI shopping agents. 

AR and virtual try-on 

• Roughly one-third of US shoppers will use AR-powered tools when buying products online.
• The virtual try-on market size is projected to hit $46.42 billion by 2030.
• The global fashion metaverse market is expected to reach $89.6 billion by 2032.

Resale

• The secondhand fashion market is growing three times faster than new apparel.
• Resale already accounts for 28% of wardrobes, rising to 30% for clothing and 40% for handbags.
• Clothing is the most common secondhand purchase category, followed by shoes.
• Fashion ecommerce resale platforms are estimated to drive $23.92 billion in sales in 2026.

BNPL and digital wallets

• Clothing is the most popular BNPL category, with 33% of customers opting for this payment method.
• BNPL transactions are expected to increase by nearly $26.34 billion between 2025 and 2030.
• The prepaid card and digital wallet is projected to reach $1.06 trillion by 2030.

Omnichannel shopping

• 8 in 10 American shoppers prefer a combination of online and in-store shopping.
• Three-quarters of shoppers search for product information online and purchase in a retail store.
• 46% of retailers are focused on delivering omnichannel experiences.
• More than half of Gen Z shoppers expect consistent experiences across online, in-store, and mobile.
• Almost 70% of retail sales are digitally influenced.

Retail

• 3 in 4 customers are likely to spend more after receiving a high-quality in-store experience. 
• Younger customers are 1.5x more likely to seek styling tips from retail associates than older shoppers.
• Retail square footage for brands in the US luxury market rose over 65% in the first half of 2025.

Diversification

• Global wholesale sales totaled $9.7 trillion.
• Etsy has nearly 100 million active buyers.

Inspirational fashion ecommerce businesses

These brands illustrate how the trends above are playing out in real-world fashion ecommerce strategies. Each example shows a different path to growth, from social-first marketing to brand building and differentiated customer experience. 

Kotn

Kotn has sustainability at an affordable price point as their core principle, and they’ve more than lived up to that in their near decade as a fashion ecommerce retailer. The Toronto-founded brand gives back to the community that gives them their product materials: Egypt. The company continues working to fund schools in that country (a total of 25 so far), benefiting thousands of lives in the region with work and education. Kotn stands out by showing how brand values and product positioning can work together to support long-term differentiation.

SKIMS

There’s no fashion ecommerce brand quite like SKIMS. Kim Kardashian’s brand is the clearest example of social media and fashion converging. 

SKIMS has set the tone for affordable shapewear, loungewear, pajamas, and lingerie, among other products, by using social media effectively for marketing and shopping, and utilizing popup retail spots. 

The business leader and influencer managed to take her DTC brand to new heights, which included a partnership with Nike to launch a collaborative line of fitness apparel under NIKESKIMS. The brand shows how social commerce, community, and physical experiences can work together to expand reach and keep momentum high.

Aimé Leon Dore

Streetwear and cult fashion brands come and go, and today’s offering is Aimé Leon Dore. The New York brand has a broad appeal to all types of buyers who want to get in on the hype. 

The simplicity of the design, collaborations with New Balance and Porsche, and celebrity co-signs create ideal conditions for this fashion brand—based in Queens, New York—to make it big online in a world where aesthetics are king. Aimé Leon Dore shows how a distinct point of view, strong brand identity, and strategic collaborations can drive demand in a crowded market.

Seize the fashion opportunity with Shopify 

As fashion ecommerce becomes more complex, brands need platforms that can support multiple channels, unified data, and faster execution. You’ll need a platform you can trust—a tool that will be there for you through the highs and lows of business, and support you as customer expectations and operating demands evolve. That’s where Shopify comes in.

Whether you’re looking to boost conversions and lower costs or build a presence anywhere from retail to online to wholesale—or anything in between—you can do it with Shopify. And because we build with the future in mind, you’ll never have to worry about outgrowing your platform again.