Apparel: pricing & assortment benchmark, 2020–2026
Based on 269,858 Apparel storefronts tracked from June 2020, of which 58,192 were still trading in July 2026.
What a typical apparel merchant looks like
| June 2020 | July 2026 | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median product price | $47.93 | $57.31 | +19.6% |
| Median catalogue size | 123 SKUs | 170 SKUs | +38.2% |
| Still trading | — | 21.6% of the 2020 cohort | 78.4% attrition |
All figures are measured on the same 58,192 stores in both periods, so none of the movement is caused by merchants entering or leaving the market.
Where Apparel sits against the wider market
| Apparel | All DTC | |
|---|---|---|
| Price change | +19.6% | +20.1% |
| Assortment change | +38.2% | +34.7% |
| Survival rate | 21.6% | 25.7% |
Prices rose in line with the market, and survival ran below it — Apparel ranks 22nd of 31 for survival among categories with a defensible sample.
US CPI-U rose 29.5% over the same span, so a +19.6% move is a real-terms cut of roughly 8%.
Price positioning
Apparel is 18th of 31 by median product price.
| Band | Example categories | Median price 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Premium | Autos & Vehicles, Internet, Antiques & Collectibles… | $110.00 – $185.10 |
| Upper-mid | Safety & Survival, Science, Home & Garden… | $73.85 – $100.21 |
| Mid | Arts & Entertainment, Libraries & Museums, Finance… | $48.19 – $70.23 |
| Value | Holidays & Seasonal, Gifts & Special Events, Beauty & Fitness… | $33.06 – $47.99 |
| Entry | Toys & Hobbies, Smoking & Vaping, Books & Literature | $25.92 – $32.40 |
A merchant pricing above $57.31 is above this category's median; the assortment benchmark is 170 products.
How fast do catalogues turn over?
In most categories this matters more than the raw product count. Measured against our own product-level crawl of 327 sampled Apparel stores, the median apparel merchant still lists 6% of the catalogue it carried in 2020 — against 19% across DTC as a whole. The growth above is genuine turnover, not products piling up unretired.
If most of your range has been listed since 2020, you are an outlier for this category.
Using these benchmarks
- Pricing. $57.31 is the mid-2026 category median. Position deliberately relative to it rather than by accident.
- Assortment. 170 products is typical. Well under that is narrow for the category; well over is broad. Neither is wrong — but it should be a decision.
- Planning. +19.6% over six years is the survivors' experience, not a forecast. Budget on it rather than assuming pricing power.
Want this for your own store?
The Pre-Holiday Benchmark Audit measures your storefront against these numbers — where your prices sit, whether your range is normal for Apparel, and what is dead weight in your catalogue. $149, delivered in 48 hours.
Method & limitations
Matched cohort of Apparel storefronts (Active, ≥10 products, known price and category) present in both June 2020 and July 2026. Medians throughout — price and catalogue distributions are heavily right-skewed and a mean describes no real store.
- Prices are modelled from storefront data, not observed transactions. Read them as relative movement, not absolute levels.
- Survivor-only. This answers what surviving apparel merchants did, not what happened to everyone. Stores that failed appear in the survival rate and nowhere else.
- Unweighted — a $50M brand counts the same as a $50k one.
- Category is the merchant's primary classification; multi-category stores are counted once, and merchants who changed category over the period are excluded from these figures.
- Assortment counts listed products, not depth — a 500-SKU store may be one product in 500 variants.
Full methodology, including the composition-bias correction these figures depend on, is in the report's method section.