Fashion in Hungary – Fashion brands in Hungary

 

 

 

 

Layer clothing (taken from HVG Hungary issue 3 December 2005)

 

 

The expansion of the fashion MNC-s is continuing in Hungary, now the bigger towns on the countryside are the targets. It is easier for the shops whom are providing cheap and one-season clothes, while for the shop, who sell more fancier clothes, have to provide plus services to reach the consumers.

 

Parties with fashion-show for the regular customers in restaurants, that’s how some fashion shops introduce their new collection (Fanatiq, Mark & Spencer). All this shows that between the middle – and top category fashion clothing market, the competition has began.

 

In the last two years brand cloth offering clothing chains were open en masse concentrating mainly to the capital city, but some companies have already started to expand their products in the countryside also. The fastest expansion was by the German C&A, which has been on the Hungarian market for three years now. The C&A has six shops in Budapest and four on the countryside (Érd, Pécs, Veszprém, Nyíregyháza). Norbert Scheele, the Central-European director  had told to HVG, that they are looking for new places in every bigger countryside town, but it is not easy to find a 1500-2000 m2 place for the new shops.  The British Mark & Spencer (present in Hungary since 1992) is looking for places in the countryside also. The S Modell Rt.’s (owns eight department stores in franchise-system) manager, Jüttner Katalin  had told to HVG that their plans for every year is to open a shop on the countryside and a “giant” shop on the Buda side of Budapest. In the other hand, the Spainish Zara, the Swedish Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) and Italian Stefanel prefers the capital city.

 

Despite the interests on the market there is no harsh struggle, but the market division is more typical, which is not only geographical. They aim different layer of the consumers by the style, the quality, the fashion tenders, by age and by price. Most of the companies are dealing with the so called fast fashion, the one-season fashion or even during the one-season the trends change often. This includes the Spanish Mango and Zara, the Swedish H&M, the American Mexx (12 shops), the French Promod (6 shops), the Polish Reserved and the German Orsay (3-3 units), and the Italian Terranova (10 shops), which are very famous between teenagers and the twenty-year old ones. Higher quality and higher price category, with wider age-groups are aimed by the shop of Benetton, Esprit, and Jackpot & Cottenfield. But because of their characteristic style only a small part of the consumers like it. All three companies mostly have sporty, sporty-elegant, the so called smart casual. Strong in this section is the Benetton with it’s special colors, Jackpot flowery, romantic-countryside, feminine lines.

 

The C&A, similar to the Mark & Spencer, call themselves family store, which sell everything from underwear, men-women-youth clothes till the accessories. Still, according to Jüttner Katalin, they are no competitors to each other, because they have different quality and price categories. Mark & Spencer’s  unique strong point is that it offers a wide range of size selection and that three different length in skirts and pants within one size. The company’s main profile is the classic, good quality clothes which can be worn through more seasons, but lately they are trying to break out from the title “more likely a clothes shop than a fashion shop”. In the mall centers Westend and Mammut Mark & Spencer’s shops from spring (in 2006 in every shop) are sold creations Per Una, from the famous English designer George Davis.

 

The Bellstar Kft.’s approach differs from the others, with their shops, Fanatiq, which sell in a  so called multi-brand system (various type of brands). “The Fanatiq has it’s regular partners, like Turnover, Bandolera, More & More or Vanilia, but I can choose from their collection freely. If they have a style change which doesn’t fit in my concept, I can look for another supplier.” said Király Adrien, the owner of Bellstar Kft., to the HVG. The Fanatiq is concentrating on over twenty-year old elegant women, whom follow the trend. It has six shops in Budapest, “teenager –shops” and shops for the elder, more conservative, because of this, they would like to fill in the gap between this two types, at least in the high-middle category. They pay a careful attention to the regular customers, beside the price discount they called them up if the new collections arrived, let them know about the price discounts, and soon after through the e-mail the customers get photos of the newest clothes. The electronic communication with the customers at Mark & Spencer is already used for a long time now.

 

Although the fashion-clothes merchants don’t really sell out their trade secrets, according to Hungarian market survey (October) done by the Dutch Modint fashion-trade association the C&A is the absolute leading company. In 2004 yet with seven shops – of which three opened during the year – had 7,5 billion forint circulations,  this is more than duplex of Mark & Spencer’s income plan for this year (over 3 billion). (On the 2004 list of Modint the British chain has 2,9 billion income with five shops.) The study estimated for the last year the income of French La Halle for 2,5 billion, for the Benetton, New Yorker and Mango around 1-2 billion. (La Halle in the meantime has pullout from the Hungarian market.)

 

The position on the market is relative, because according to the FashionScope fancy name study of Gfk Market research Institute the shops in 2004 had only 33 % share of the 344 billion forint value cloth-market’s commerce. Almost at the same value (by the piece even more) clothing were sold at the street vendors and at the “Far-East shops”, and 15 % was sold from the hypermarkets. For the shops which sell quality clothes, on more expensive prices is not a good news, that an average household spent around 108 000 forint on clothes last year (according to the Modint 35 000 forint per head), and that the average consumer price for a bought cloth is 1465 forint, for the overclothes 2512 forint.

 

 

Average spending on clothes by countries in 2004 in Euro

 

Country	Value
Italy	964
Great-Britain	915
Norway	886
Greece	862
Austria	805
Denmark	738
Switzerland	715
Germany	714
Ireland	699
Sweden	698
Belgium	664
Netherlands	590
Finland	554
France	507
Spain	499
Portugal	444
Czech	180
Hungary	137
Poland	100

 

Source: Modint