Athleisure and Activewear
Athleisure and Activewear for Everyday Living
Business Opportunities in Athleisure and Activewear for Everyday Living
There has been a growing awareness of the vital contribution exercise makes to physical and mental wellbeing. Sedentary occupations replacing physical labour and unhealthy dietary choices are contributing to a growing obesity crisis in advanced societies. This has driven a growth in exercise through gyms, sport, yoga studios and personal fitness training as part of a healthier lifestyle.
However, people not only want to feel good, they want to look good. Hence the rise of athleisure, clothing for exercise, which fuses fashion with fitness and which is frequently publicly worn by celebrities and role models. This is now a well established market, dominated by major brands such as Adidas and Nike, but it is still a growing market as the distinctions between work, social and leisure attire are beginning to blur. Consumers increasingly want leisure clothing to perform but also to be attractive and trend-led.
Another development in recent years has been a growing concern among consumers about the ethical production of goods and this has been particularly marked in the fashion sector with well-publicised cases of worker exploitation in developing countries and of the environmental cost often associated with production and transportation. Consumers increasingly favour producers who demonstrably seek to tackle these issues.
Athleisure, which hardly existed a few years ago, has grown enormously and globally with an increased awareness of the necessity for exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle. This has been accompanied by a huge expansion in gyms and fitness clubs – both independents and chains. Exercise clothing and leisurewear have moved far beyond the merely functional to become a fashion sector in their own right, with their own brands and labels, often championed by celebrities and sports personalities, with the distinctions between leisure, social and work becoming blurred.
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