We review South Africa’s apparel market to provide insights into the market share contributions and growth prospects of the listed retailers. Since 2008, total apparel retail sales have risen at a 6.7% CAGR, with SA apparel increasing its contribution to total SA retail sales by 10bps to 15.5%. The growth in apparel was driven by average CPI inflation of 2.9%, per capita volume growth of c. 2.4% p.a, and population growth of 1.4% p.a.
An in-depth look at the performance of the Retailers’ Liaison Committee (RLC) since 2021 shows that only the womenswear and homeware categories increased sales in 2025, while the core apparel categories in South Africa underperformed. Womenswear grew 4.1% y-y (+3.6% y-y in SA only) off a muted base in 2024. Kids and babywear continued to struggle with sales expansion in SA. Despite moderate inflation, volumes in this category continue to contract.
Our review of the SA apparel market over the last five years shows that RLC constituents have steadily lost market share. In 2025, we estimate that the RLC market share was c. 45.5%, down from 51.5% in 2020. This represents a loss for the RLC of c. R44.7bn, which could be due to offshore e-commerce retailers (OERs) Shein and Temu, which were estimated to have a market share of around 3.6-3.7% in 2024. We believe this could have reached c. 4.3% as of 2025, given continued market share losses in the RLC.
We conducted a merchandise profile analysis of the biggest apparel retailers in SA, including Shein and Temu. We found that Shein’s pricing profile is similar to that of value retailers PPH and MRP, with over 50% of apparel priced below R200. Temu is less value-priced and more mid-priced, with over 50% of its apparel costing between R200 and R600.