(Turin) – The Italian city of Turin hosted leading Islamic and modest fashion brands at a one-day roundtable that addressed critical key challenges and opportunities in the global Islamic economy sector.
The event was held at a time when global Muslim consumer spending on clothing and footwear reached $266 billion in 2013, representing 11.9% of global clothing and footwear expenditure. If this market were a country, it would be ranked third after the largest two in the world – the U.S. ($494 billion) and China ($285 billion). Muslim expenditure on clothing is expected to reach $488 billion by 2019.
Top countries with Muslim consumer consumption (based on 2013 data) are Turkey ($39.3 billion), UAE ($22.5 billion), Indonesia ($18.8 billion), and Iran ($17.1 billion). Within this larger Muslim consumer spend on clothing, the modest fashion industry is growing rapidly.
However, the modest fashion market is fragmented and this has created challenges for market players in different countries to scale and expand cross-border. In order to leverage the rapidly growing profile of, and demand for modest fashion, the Turin roundtable discussions have started the ball rolling on furthering actionable outcomes to address specific key issues: The need to map the global modest fashion ecosystem to gain clear visibility of all participants, from designers to retailers, in order to identify weak points and leverage on strengths; and the need to identify end-to-end ethical business practices and processes in order to uphold the Islamic mandates of transparency, fairness, and equity.
(Courtesy WAM)