Facts and Figures in the UK fashion industry This is the FashionUnited page with Facts and Figures about the fashion industry in the United Kingdom. Great Britain remains a leading center for the manufacturing of clothing and high- quality fabrics, with the clothing and textile industries combined producing £8.5 billion- worth of goods and employing 150,000 people in 2007. The UK high street fashion industry is worth an estimated £44.5 billion. In 2009 UK retail sales were over £285 billion, compared to the £450 million per annum that designer fashion makes to the UK economy. The retail sector generates 8% of the Gross Domestic Product of the UK. In 2009 there were 293,510 retail outlets in the UK. The average British household whole expenditure in 2008 was £471.0 per week, compared to £459.20 from same period in 2007. Number of employees in the fashion retail industry: The retail industry employed over 2.9 million people as at the end of December 2009. This equates to 11% of the total UK workforce. The Textile and Apparel sector employs more than 35 million people directly, while the Apparel sector alone having over 6 million employees. £41,054m was the total spent in clothing and footwear in the United Kingdom in 2009. Thus, British consumers spent £46.2 billion in 2009 on clothing and adornment products, which represented per capita annual spending of £753. For the past years, spending on clothing and footwear has fallen to a record low-down to an average of 21.60 pounds per week..." Overseas sales of apparel and textile industry combined are worth £7.3 billion at manufacturers’ prices, being major export sectors USA, Japan, Russia, France, Italy, Middle East, Hong Kong, and China. Despite more than a third of consumer spending goes through shops, the online fashion market continues to boom and reached nearly £4.1 billion in 2009, up by 26% on 2008. Internet retailing was the channel least affected by the economic slowdown towards the end of the review period. Consumers continued to use the internet in order to seek out bargains and compare prices at the click of a button. However, in 2009 retailers were more cautious in entering internet retailing. Most apparel companies based in the UK opted either to offer only a portion of their products online, or sold goods via an established online retailer. As household penetration for internet retailing grows during the forecast period, non-store retailing is set to contribute most to growth in retailing during the forecast period. Shopping on the go, as a result of iPhone applications and hand held PDA’s, will also drive growth. Posted by Emily Thompson