Clothing Boutique Video Statistics

Key takeaways

1. In our November 12, 2026 read of YouTube’s 507 most-viewed ‘clothing store’, ‘boutique’ and ‘clothing boutique’ videos, clothing stores and boutiques speaking as themselves drew 17.3% of the views of the 418 on-topic videos, kids’ shows and doll channels 30.5%, and fashion, travel, lifestyle and general creators together 28.1%. (Mark Studios) See details
2. 61 store and boutique channels appear in the sample, 44 of them placed in India. No clothing chain has a channel of its own in it, and 92.6% of the stores’ own videos ran 60 seconds or less. (Mark Studios) See details
3. 4 of the store channels are U.S.-placed; the only Florida one, So Sweet Boutique in Oviedo, had 30,401,667 views on one short, and none is in Palm Beach, Broward or Martin County. The 4 U.S. stores uploaded 706 videos in the year to November 12, 2026, with a median of 1,447 views. (Mark Studios) See details
4. 38.5% of the videos YouTube returned for ‘boutique’ were not about clothing, many of them songs called Boutique, against 12.6% for ‘clothing store’. (Mark Studios) See details
5. BLS counted 81,417 U.S. clothing and clothing accessories retailers with employees in 2025, 6,959 in Florida, 664 in Palm Beach County, 626 in Broward and 65 in Martin; since 2022 the count includes online-only clothing sellers. (BLS) See details
6. That is 42.1 clothing retailers per 100,000 residents in Palm Beach County, 39.1 in Martin and 31.1 in Broward, against 29.7 for Florida and 23.8 for the U.S. (our calculation). (Mark Studios, from BLS and Census) See details
7. 74.3% of U.S. clothing and clothing accessories businesses had no paid employees in 2023: 241,235 nonemployers against 83,287 stores with employees (our calculation; the two counts use different industry codes, so the share leans high). The newest count, for 2024, is 250,712 businesses with no employees. (Census Bureau) See details
8. The 2022 industry code moved online-only clothing sellers into the store count: 7,265 of the 90,230 clothing retailers with employees in the 2022 Economic Census (8.1%) were former online and mail-order sellers, and they made 30.3% of the industry’s sales. (Census Bureau) See details
9. Retail salespersons held 58.4% of the 855,950 jobs at U.S. clothing and clothing accessories retailers in May 2025 (499,850), and the median wage across all of the industry’s jobs was $35,330 a year. (BLS) See details
10. Apparel prices rose 5.9% from 2019 to 2025 by the CPI-U: 9.2% for men’s and boys’ apparel and 1.7% for women’s and girls’ (our calculation from BLS annual averages). (BLS) See details
11. The average U.S. household (consumer unit) spent $2,010 on apparel and services in 2025, 2.5% of its total spending, by BLS’s Consumer Expenditure Surveys. (BLS) See details
12. Gap Inc. ran 2,474 company-operated stores at January 31, 2026. Among the public chains that list stores by state, Citi Trends had the most in Florida: 51 of its 590. (SEC filings) See details
13. Gap Inc. put 5.1% of its fiscal 2025 net sales into advertising and Abercrombie & Fitch 5.9% into marketing (our calculation from their 10-Ks), and Torrid made 64% of its net sales online. (SEC filings) See details
14. 322 annual reports on Form 10-K filed from 2001 to 2025 say “clothing store” or “clothing stores”, peaking at 22 in 2007 and down to 3 in 2024; only 3 have ever said “clothing boutique” (our EDGAR count). (Mark Studios, from SEC EDGAR) See details
15. Florida’s back-to-school sales tax holiday now recurs every year with no end date in the statute and, under a 2026 law, runs from July 20 through August 20 for clothing priced at $100 or less per item. (Florida Legislature) See details
16. The “30% of clothes bought online are returned” line began as an April 2016 consultancy infographic about all products, not clothes, with no source. NRF’s counted figure is 19.3% of all U.S. online sales in 2025, across every category. (Mark Studios) See details
17. The “fashion makes 10% of global emissions” figure appears in a 2018 UN climate secretariat news item that cites no study; the studies we read put fashion at 8.1% (Quantis, 2016 data) or 4% (Global Fashion Agenda and McKinsey, 2018 data). (Mark Studios) See details

Who gets the views on YouTube's most-viewed clothing store and boutique videos?

Kids' channels and creators, not the stores: in our November 12, 2026 YouTube Data API read of the most-viewed videos for 'clothing store', 'boutique' and 'clothing boutique', clothing stores and boutiques speaking as themselves drew 17.3% of the on-topic views, while kids' shows and doll channels drew 30.5% and fashion, travel, lifestyle and general creators together drew 28.1%. Kids' shows and withheld family channels together drew 40.5%, and stores, boutiques and apparel brands together 20.3% (our calculation).

This is a view-sorted global search snapshot, not a census of fashion video: we took the top four pages of YouTube's view-sorted results for each phrase that day, 507 unique videos from 397 channels. 418 of them were about clothing, fashion shopping, clothing stores or boutiques, and they drew 60.1% of all views in the sample; the median one had 1,403,677 views (our calculation).

Views bunch at the top. FunFun Toy Doll TV, a doll and toy channel, drew 10.9% of all on-topic views with three Barbie clothing-store videos, and Disney Junior FR drew 6.1% with five episodes of La Boutique de Minnie. The three most-viewed channels drew 22.0% and the ten most-viewed 42.0% (our calculation).

How do clothing stores and boutiques themselves do in YouTube's results?

Mostly small independents in India, posting shorts: 61 store and boutique channels made the top four pages for any of the three phrases on November 12, 2026, and they uploaded 81 of the 418 on-topic videos. Clothing chains such as Zara, H&M, Gap, Primark or Uniqlo have 0 channels of their own in the sample; 44 of the store channels were placed in India and 4 were thrift, vintage or resale stores. 92.6% of the stores' own videos ran 60 seconds or less. 18 of their titles carried a WhatsApp or phone contact, an order prompt or a shop link, and 37 named a saree, suit, kurti, lehenga, blouse or other South Asian wear (our calculation).

The most-viewed store channel was Le white boutique, a bridal boutique in Kunnamangalam, Kerala, with 60,529,142 views on one 16-second short. Next came Sunflower By Ontora, a boutique in Jamuna Future Park, Dhaka (54,226,888 views on one short), and kachhi shop, a women's ethnic and bridal wear store in Hyderabad (33,194,707 views on seven shorts). Teaching the trade is its own genre: 27 channels taught sewing, fashion design or how to run a boutique or clothing brand (our calculation).

How much of YouTube's "boutique" results is about clothing?

Much less than for 'clothing boutique': 38.5% of the unique videos YouTube returned for 'boutique' on November 12, 2026 were not about clothing or clothing stores, against 12.6% for 'clothing store' and 1.5% for 'clothing boutique'. 24 of the off-topic 'boutique' videos were songs, many of them Punjabi and Latin tracks named Boutique, and 19 of the off-topic 'clothing store' videos were games, most of them Clothing Store Simulator play-throughs (our calculation).

Each phrase pulls a different crowd. Stores and boutiques drew 38.5% of the on-topic views in the 'clothing boutique' list, while in the 'clothing store' list fashion, haul and thrift creators drew 26.4%. Kids' shows and doll channels drew 51.6% of the on-topic 'boutique' views, most of it Disney's Minnie's Bow-Toons and its French and Spanish versions (our calculation).

Where are the channels behind the most-viewed clothing store videos?

The United States by views, India by number: channels placed in the United States by their own text or country setting drew 35.5% of the on-topic views in our November 12, 2026 sample, from 65 channels, and channels placed in India drew 26.4%, the most of any other country. 4 of the store and boutique channels were U.S.-placed: So Sweet Boutique (Oviedo, Florida), The Alley Chicago Store (Chicago), Into the Past Vintage (Rome, Georgia) and Showroom LA (Los Angeles). The only Florida store in the sample, So Sweet Boutique, a prom and formal dress boutique in Oviedo, had 30,401,667 views on one 6-second short, and the sample holds 0 store or boutique channels that name Palm Beach, Broward or Martin County (our calculation).

How long are the most-viewed clothing store videos, and what are they about?

Mostly a minute or less: 54.8% of the on-topic videos in our November 12, 2026 sample ran 60 seconds or less, and they drew 48.6% of the on-topic views; the median short one had 1,923,437 views, against 1,106,123 for the median longer one. 79.7% of the on-topic videos were published in 2024 or later (our calculation).

South Asian wear leads the titles: 79 on-topic titles named a saree, suit, kurti, lehenga, blouse, abaya or other South Asian or Middle Eastern wear (13.9% of the views). 50 carried a price, a sale, a budget, cheap, affordable or luxury (4.7%), 42 named starting or running a clothing business, a profit or an investment, and 36 named a wedding, bridal wear, prom, a festival such as Diwali or back to school (12.2%). 29 named thrift, vintage or reselling; 25 carried a WhatsApp or phone contact, an order prompt or a shop link; 24 named an outfit, OOTD, styling or a look; 23 named a retailer or brand such as Zara, Zudio, Shein, Walmart or Meesho; 17 named a store tour, a visit or shopping with me; and 16 named a try-on or a haul. The store formats that sellers talk up are rarer in the top results: 15 titles named an opening, 8 new arrivals or a drop, 7 behind the scenes or packing an order, 6 a prank or a challenge, and 2 live selling (our calculation).

How often do U.S. clothing stores in YouTube's top results post?

About twice a day between them: the 4 U.S.-placed store and boutique channels in our sample uploaded 706 videos in the year to November 12, 2026, 90.2% of them 60 seconds or less, and the median upload had 1,447 views; 29 passed a million views. Showroom LA uploaded 279 and So Sweet Boutique 254, 98.8% of them 60 seconds or less, with a median of 1,166 views. The Alley Chicago Store uploaded 156 with a median of 93,158 views; 26 passed a million and its top upload had 11,724,100. Into the Past Vintage uploaded 17. 16.3% of the year's titles carried a price, a sale, a budget or luxury. This is a four-channel list from one search, not a survey of U.S. clothing stores (our calculation).

Method and limits: YouTube Data API, read November 12, 2026, three search phrases, global (no region filter). We did not watch the videos; channel classes were set by hand from each channel's own text, and the uploader decides the class, so a creator's or TV show's visit to a boutique counts as the creator's or the show's, not the boutique's. We do not name private customers that stores, creators or TV shows film. Family channels built around a real child, child performers and personal channels of private people are published as counts only, 27 videos from 21 channels, with no title, channel, date or views; shares on this page include their views. 23 sample videos were set by their uploaders as made for kids, 21 of them on-topic. YouTube's uploader label for altered or synthetic content appeared on 0 videos (the field was absent on every one). Many titles are in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Malayalam, Arabic, French, Spanish or Russian; the title topics read their English words, hashtags and a few listed words, so topic counts are floors. View counts are lifetime snapshots and include ad views. Online-only fashion sellers have their own page: ecommerce video statistics. The data are in youtube-clothing-videos.csv, youtube-clothing-channels.csv and youtube-clothing-us-store-channels.csv.

What do studies say about short video and fashion influencers?

They link them to stated intention to buy clothes, not to measured sales. In a 2022 questionnaire study in China, 752 valid questionnaires from users of mobile short-video apps showed that interacting on the apps raised the perceived value of clothing, the sense of immersion and the intention to buy it (PLOS ONE, Hewei & Youngsook, Fuzhou University, 2022). A 2022 survey of 332 young people in China who watch short-video ads found that ads judged fashionable, social, entertaining, personal and on-brand raised satisfaction (Frontiers in Psychology, Tian et al., 2022); "fashion" there describes the ad, not a clothing-only sample. In a 2025 survey of 324 consumers in China who follow social media fashion influencers, the more relatable the influencer, the higher the stated intention to buy (Acta Psychologica, Wang et al., 2025). A 2022 study of 371 fast-fashion customers found that a celebrity endorser's trustworthiness, attractiveness, credibility and expertise raised purchase intention and impulse buying (Frontiers in Psychology, Liu & Zheng, UNSW Sydney, 2022); neither its abstract nor the methods we read say in which country the customers were surveyed.

Content marketing and influencers also mattered in a 2026 survey of 1,191 young consumers in Hanoi, where they consistently drove intention to buy sustainable fashion during and after the pandemic (Acta Psychologica, Pham et al., 2026). In Vietnam, a 2025 convenience-sample survey of 902 people found that positive, accurate, complete and useful online reviews raised trust in domestic fashion brands, and trust had the strongest link to online-shopping intention (Acta Psychologica, Ngo et al., 2025). The one fashion live-selling source we found is a dataset: published in 2020, it holds 7,050 Facebook posts, including recorded and live videos, from the pages of 10 Thai fashion and cosmetics sellers between March 2012 and June 2018, with each post's shares, comments and reactions (Data in Brief, Dehouche, Mahidol University International College, 2020). We found no peer-reviewed study in PubMed that measured live selling for clothing alone: the live-stream commerce studies we read do not name apparel in their abstracts. Every study in this section measures attitudes or intentions in surveys of convenience or online samples, mostly in China and Vietnam, not what people bought.

Does virtual try-on change how people shop for clothes?

In the one U.S. study we found, it raised satisfaction and loyalty: a 2026 consumer-panel survey of 509 U.S. online apparel shoppers found that AI virtual try-on that worked well, felt enjoyable and could be customised raised its value to users, which raised satisfaction, repurchase loyalty and brand loyalty (Behavioral Sciences, Kang et al., University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2026). The panel was 47.5% women (Behavioral Sciences). Privacy matters too: in a 2026 survey of 709 Generation Z consumers in China's Yangtze River Delta, worry that the try-on tool was intrusive lowered intention to use it, while general privacy concerns had no direct effect (Frontiers in Psychology, Mao et al., 2026). An earlier 2021 study by University of Jordan researchers of 315 young shoppers found that optimism and innovativeness shaped their intention to use virtual try-on for online apparel (International Journal of Information Management, Qasem, 2021); the abstract does not say where the sample lived.

How clothes are shown changes how they are judged. In a 2021 brain-imaging study at Yonsei University in Seoul, 39 women aged 20 to 29 shopped online for clothes while being scanned; garment fit, and whether a garment appeared on a mannequin or on an image carrying the shopper's own face, changed brain activity during the purchase decision (Frontiers in Neuroscience, Kim et al., 2021). In two 2026 online-shopping experiments, one for apparel and one for cosmetics, each with 192 valid participants, visually rich, interactive and uncluttered interfaces earned the highest perceived shopping quality (Behavioral Sciences, Hu et al., Kookmin University, 2026). These are lab and survey measures of perception and intention, not sales or returns.

Does buying secondhand clothing replace buying new?

Not in a 2025 Yale study: in its survey of 1,009 U.S. consumers, fielded online in two waves in 2024 (Scientific Reports, Mizrachi & Tal, Yale University, 2025), secondhand clothing consumption was positively correlated with new clothing purchases (r = 0.58), particularly among younger consumers and frequent shoppers (Scientific Reports). 69.4% of respondents had bought secondhand clothing at least once (Scientific Reports). The abstract calls the sample nationally representative, but the full text reports that about 70% of participants completed more than two-thirds of the survey (Scientific Reports); the result is a correlation from self-reports, not proof that resale causes extra buying (Scientific Reports). In China, a 2025 study of a random sample of 654 consumers modelled intention to buy second-hand clothing and found that past purchase experience changed how the drivers worked (Frontiers in Psychology, Zhou et al., 2025).

How much do families plan to spend on clothes for school and the holidays?

Families with children in elementary through high school planned to spend $249.36 on average on clothing and accessories for back-to-school 2025, according to the National Retail Federation, a retail trade group, and Prosper Insights & Analytics (National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics, 2025). That is 1.6% less than the $253.29 they planned in 2024 (National Retail Federation), before inflation (our calculation). NRF put the 2025 school clothing total at $11.4 billion (National Retail Federation), with a further $169.13 per family on shoes (National Retail Federation); college students and their families planned $166.07 each on clothing and accessories (National Retail Federation). Clothing stores were the fourth most popular destination, planned by 41% of back-to-school shoppers in 2025 (National Retail Federation) against 42% in 2024 (National Retail Federation); online came first, at 55% (National Retail Federation). The 2025 survey asked 7,581 consumers in the first week of July (National Retail Federation), the 2024 survey 7,533 (National Retail Federation).

Clothing tops holiday lists too. Clothing was the most popular planned gift category of the 2024 winter holidays, at 54% of shoppers (National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics, 2024), in a survey of 8,135 adults in early November 2024 (National Retail Federation). Shoppers aged 18 to 24 were more likely to find gift ideas on social media: 28% on TikTok (National Retail Federation) and 27% on Instagram (National Retail Federation). In NRF's 2026 holiday survey of 8,094 adults in early October 2026 (National Retail Federation), 44% said they would like to receive clothing, second only to gift cards at 47% (National Retail Federation). These are plans and wishes stated in online surveys, not sales, and NRF's members sell the goods it asks about. Government figures on what households actually spend on clothes are in the spending section of this page.

How much do Americans spend on clothes?

The average U.S. household (a "consumer unit" in BLS terms) spent $2,010 on apparel and services in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Surveys (BLS). That was 2.5% of its total spending of $81,905 (BLS), and 0.4% more than the $2,001 spent in 2024, a change BLS does not mark as statistically significant (BLS). The survey covered about 138.0 million consumer units (137,994 thousand) (BLS); multiplying the average by that count gives roughly $277.4 billion of household spending on apparel and services in 2025 (our calculation, a rough figure: BLS publishes its own aggregate tables).

Clothing has taken a shrinking slice of the household budget. In 2019 the average consumer unit spent $1,883 on apparel and services (BLS), 3.0% of its $63,036 total (our calculation). From 2019 to 2025 apparel spending rose 6.7% while total spending rose 29.9% (our calculation, current dollars, not adjusted for inflation), so the apparel share fell from 3.0% to 2.5%. Spending was $1,754 in 2021, $1,945 in 2022 and $2,041 in 2023, the highest of the years shown here (BLS), then fell 2.0% in 2024, one of the few major spending components to fall that year (BLS). The 2025 average was still 1.5% below the 2023 level (our calculation).

The 2025 survey has a gap: the Census Bureau, which collects it for BLS, could not interview households in October and November 2025 during the lapse in federal appropriations, and resumed on December 5, 2025; BLS reweighted the year to cover the missing months (BLS).

The Bureau of Economic Analysis, which measures all consumer spending rather than surveying households, put the growth of U.S. spending on clothing and footwear at 3.5% in 2023 and Florida's at 3.0% (BEA). Clothing and footwear added 0.10 percentage point to that year's growth in total U.S. consumer spending (BEA). These are current-dollar changes from BEA's personal consumption expenditures by state; BEA's newer release documents no longer print the clothing line.

How much clothing ends up in landfills?

U.S. landfills received 11.3 million tons of textiles in 2018 (11,300 thousand tons in EPA's table), the newest year the Environmental Protection Agency publishes (EPA). That was 66.4% of the 17 million tons of textiles in municipal solid waste that year (17,030 thousand tons) (our calculation from EPA's table (EPA)). Another 3.2 million tons were burned with energy recovery (EPA), 18.9% of the total (3,220 thousand tons) (our calculation (EPA)), and 2.5 million tons were recycled, a recycling rate of 14.7% (EPA). Textiles were 5.8% of all municipal solid waste generated (EPA), 9.3% of the waste burned with energy recovery and 7.7% of the waste landfilled (EPA).

Clothing and footwear, which EPA counts as products (made of textiles, rubber, leather and some plastics) rather than as a material, came to 13 million tons in 2018, 4.4% of municipal solid waste (EPA). EPA estimated that 1.7 million tons of it were recycled (EPA). Its table puts about 9.1 million tons (9,070 thousand) of clothing and footwear in landfills, 69.9% of the about 13.0 million tons (12,970 thousand) generated (our calculation (EPA)), and about 2.2 million tons (2,210 thousand) burned with energy recovery (EPA).

The tonnage has grown for decades. U.S. textile waste rose 79.6% from 2000, when it was about 9.5 million tons (9,480 thousand), to 2018 (our calculation (EPA)), and the 2018 total was 9.7 times the about 1.8 million tons (1,760 thousand) of 1960 (our calculation (EPA)).

EPA's caveats matter when these numbers are repeated. They are modelled estimates for municipal solid waste, built partly from apparel and footwear sales data supplied by the American Apparel & Footwear Association, a trade group (EPA). Clothing that is reused is not counted until it is eventually thrown away. EPA's 13% recycling rate for textiles in clothing and footwear rests on information from the American Textile Recycling Service (EPA). And 2018 is still EPA's newest year on these pages, which EPA last updated in March 2026.

How many people work in U.S. clothing stores, and what are they paid?

All clothing and clothing accessories retailers (NAICS 458110, 2022 NAICS, which since the 2022 code change also counts online-only clothing sellers) employed an annual average of 845,178 private-sector workers in the United States in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which counts jobs covered by unemployment insurance (BLS). The average weekly wage was $641 (BLS), or $33,325 a year per job (BLS), before inflation and counting part-time jobs as whole jobs. Owners who pay themselves no wage are in none of these counts.

The Census Bureau counts more people. Its County Business Patterns, which still uses the 2017 code (NAICS 4481 clothing stores, without online-only sellers), counted 1.19 million paid employees at U.S. clothing stores in March 2023 (1,190,123) (Census), and the 2022 Economic Census counted 1.23 million at all clothing and clothing accessories retailers in March 2022 (1,226,803) (Census). The Census counts come from the Business Register and a March pay period; QCEW comes from state unemployment insurance records and is an average over the year, so the two do not match and should not be mixed.

The workforce is smaller than a decade ago. QCEW counted 1.03 million private jobs at clothing stores (NAICS 4481) in 2014 (1,031,571) (BLS); the 2025 count is 18.1% lower (our calculation), even though the 2022 code also takes in online-only sellers. On the same 2022 definition, jobs barely moved from 2022 to 2025: 845,936 in 2022 (BLS), down 0.1% by 2025 (our calculation).

How many clothing store jobs are there in Florida and in Palm Beach, Broward and Martin counties?

All clothing and clothing accessories retailers in Florida (NAICS 458110, 2022 NAICS) employed an annual average of 71,172 private-sector workers in 2025, at an average weekly wage of $671, per BLS QCEW (BLS). Broward County had the most clothing retail jobs of the three South Florida counties and Palm Beach County paid the most. Each count below is a QCEW 2025 annual average of private jobs covered by unemployment insurance.

Average weekly wages are low because many clothing store jobs are part-time: QCEW divides total pay by every job, full- or part-time. With so few jobs, Martin County's average can move a lot from one year to the next.

Which jobs do clothing store workers do, and what do they earn?

Most clothing store jobs are sales jobs: retail salespersons held 58.4% of the wage and salary jobs at U.S. clothing and clothing accessories retailers in May 2025 (our calculation), 499,850 of 855,950 (BLS) (BLS), according to BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS). The median annual wage for all occupations in the industry was $35,330 (BLS). OEWS publishes the industry as NAICS 458100 Clothing and Clothing Accessories Retailers, which holds the one industry 458110 (all clothing and clothing accessories retailers, including online-only sellers since the 2022 code change); it does not publish a separate 458110 file. OEWS counts wage and salary workers only; self-employed owners are excluded.

The table lists the largest store-floor occupations we asked BLS for, plus the window and display staff who dress the mannequins and the sales managers; it is not a full staffing list. BLS publishes no estimate for wholesale and retail buyers (13-1022) in this industry.

How have clothing prices changed?

Apparel cost 5.9% more in 2025 than in 2019, by the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) (our calculation, from BLS annual averages): the apparel index averaged 124.052 in 2019 (BLS) and 131.311 in 2025 (BLS). Against its 2015 average of 125.903 (BLS), 2025 was only 4.3% higher (our calculation), so clothing prices were flat to falling for years before 2019.

Men's clothes rose faster than women's. Men's and boys' apparel rose 9.2% from 2019 to 2025, from 118.538 (BLS) to 129.501 (BLS); women's and girls' apparel rose 1.7%, from 106.747 (BLS) to 108.585 (BLS); and women's apparel alone rose 0.6%, from 109.240 (BLS) to 109.937 (BLS) (our calculations). Each index has its own base, so compare the changes, not the index levels.

Prices are now rising faster. From September 2025 to September 2026, BLS reports apparel up 3.4% (BLS), men's and boys' apparel up 3.8% (BLS), women's and girls' apparel up 2.5% (BLS) and women's apparel up 2.1% (BLS). The apparel index was 135.424 in September 2025 (BLS), 140.043 in September 2026 (BLS) and 138.437 in October 2026, the newest month (BLS). BLS did not collect October 2025 prices during the 2025 shutdown, so no change over the year to October 2026 exists. These indexes price clothing from every kind of seller (department stores, discount stores and online sellers too), not only clothing stores.

How many clothing stores are there in the United States?

The United States had an annual average of 81,417 private clothing and clothing accessories retailers with employees in 2025 (NAICS 458110, 2022 NAICS: all clothing and clothing accessories retailers, from boutiques to chains, plus, since the 2022 code change, online-only clothing sellers), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) (BLS). That is 23.8 per 100,000 residents (our calculation, against the Census Bureau's July 1, 2025 population). Each establishment is one location, so a chain with many stores counts many times, and owners who work alone are not counted.

The count is drifting down. QCEW counted 85,037 clothing stores (NAICS 4481, the 2017 code) in 2014 (BLS), 81,674 in 2019 (BLS) and 76,499 in 2021 (BLS), so 2025 was 4.3% below 2014 (our calculation). The 2022 code change added online-only sellers: the count jumped to 82,022 in 2022 under the new code (BLS), and on that same definition it has since fallen 0.7% (our calculation). QCEW's open data starts in 2014, so the 2021-to-2022 jump is reclassification, not new stores.

The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns shows a longer decline. It counted 141,884 U.S. apparel and accessory stores with paid employees in 1986 under the older SIC 5600 code, which also counted shoe stores (Census); 92,829 clothing stores in 1998, the first year on NAICS 4481 (Census); 99,522 in 2008 (Census); 93,021 in 2019 (Census); and 83,287 in 2023 (Census), 10.3% fewer than in 1998 (our calculation). Women's clothing stores, the code most boutiques used before 2022, were the largest group: 26,279 in 2023 (Census), and QCEW counted 24,576 in 2021 (BLS).

Most clothing stores are small. 28,887 of the 2023 clothing stores with paid employees, or 34.7%, had fewer than five employees (Census) (our calculation); in Florida it was 2,515 (Census) of 7,034 stores, or 35.8% (our calculation from County Business Patterns (Census)).

How many clothing stores are there in Florida and in Palm Beach, Broward and Martin counties?

Florida averaged 6,959 private clothing and clothing accessories retailers with employees in 2025 (NAICS 458110, 2022 NAICS: all clothing and clothing accessories retailers), per BLS QCEW (BLS): 29.7 per 100,000 residents, more than the national rate of 23.8 (our calculation). Palm Beach County had the highest rate of the three South Florida counties, 42.1 per 100,000 residents, and Martin County was close behind.

The per-100,000 rates divide each count by the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 resident population estimates for July 1, 2025: 341,784,857 for the United States (Census Bureau), 23,462,518 for Florida, 1,575,726 for Palm Beach County, 2,013,317 for Broward County and 166,272 for Martin County (Census Bureau).

Rates per 100,000 residents and changes are our calculations. The 2014 and 2021 counts use NAICS 4481 Clothing Stores; the 2025 counts use NAICS 458110 Clothing and Clothing Accessories Retailers, which since the 2022 code change also counts online-only sellers with employees, so part of any rise after 2021 is reclassification.

How did the 2022 industry code change the clothing store count?

Since the 2022 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), online-only and direct-selling clothing sellers are counted with clothing stores, and the move was large. The Census Bureau's 2022 Economic Census bridge table shows that 7,265 of the 90,230 U.S. clothing and clothing accessories retailers with paid employees came from the former electronic shopping and mail-order industry (Census) (Census), 8.1% of locations, but they made $86,162,577 thousand (about $86.2 billion) of sales (Census), 30.3% of the industry total (our calculation), with 99,724 paid employees (Census), 8.1% of the industry's (our calculation). Another 1,048 came from direct selling (Census).

The same table shows where the stores came from: 26,743 establishments were former women's clothing stores (Census), and former family clothing stores (stores that sell clothing for men, women and children) made $118,835,429 thousand of sales (Census). Figures before and after 2022 on this page are labelled with their code.

How many clothing businesses have no employees?

About 74.3% of U.S. clothing and clothing accessories businesses had no paid employees in 2023: 241,235 nonemployer clothing and clothing accessories retailers (Census) against 83,287 clothing stores with paid employees (our calculation, Census Nonemployer Statistics 2023 against County Business Patterns 2023). Nonemployer Statistics is built from IRS business tax records and counts businesses that report business receipts but pay no wages, most of them sole proprietors. It publishes clothing retailers at the five-digit level (NAICS 45811, which holds the one industry 458110) under the 2022 code, which counts online-only sellers and resellers who sell only online, while County Business Patterns 2023 still uses the 2017 store code, so the share leans high.

The newest count is higher still: 250,712 nonemployer clothing and clothing accessories retailers in 2024 (Census), with receipts of $10,756,513 thousand (about $10.8 billion) (Census), and 21,315 in Florida (Census), up from 19,398 in 2023 (Census).

How much do clothing stores sell, and what do they sell?

U.S. clothing and clothing accessories retailers with paid employees (NAICS 458110, 2022 NAICS, including online-only sellers) had sales of $284,788,056 thousand (about $284.8 billion) in 2022, per the 2022 Economic Census (Census). That was 53.0% more than the $186,173,965 thousand of clothing stores (NAICS 4481) in 2017 (Census), before inflation (our calculation), but most of the gap is the code change: former online-only sellers alone made 30.3% of 2022 sales. The 2017 census counted 96,419 clothing stores (Census). Florida's retailers sold $24,207,967 thousand (Census), 8.5% of the U.S. total (our calculation), from 7,725 establishments (Census).

Women's clothing is the biggest line: it made 42.6% of the industry's 2022 sales (Census), and 72,896 establishments, 80.8% of the total, reported selling it (Census) (our calculation). Men's clothing made 20.5% (Census), clothing accessories 8.9% (Census), footwear 8.5% (Census), sold by 40,298 establishments (Census), children's wear 7.4% (Census) and cosmetics and fragrances 1.6% (Census), per the 2022 Economic Census product lines.

Clothing store sales are growing in dollars. Our sum of the Census Bureau's monthly retail trade estimates (not seasonally adjusted; NAICS 4481 clothing stores, the 2017 code, without online-only sellers) gives about $179,192 million in 2014, $188,657 million in 2019 and $222,691 million in 2025: up 18.0% since 2019 and 24.3% since 2014, before inflation (our calculations). The Census Bureau's Annual Integrated Economic Survey put 2024 sales of clothing stores (NAICS 4481) at $206,790,488 thousand (Census), $31,671,904 thousand of it at women's clothing stores (Census). That survey publishes no advertising expense for any clothing store industry and no e-commerce share for clothing and clothing accessories stores in 2024 (the Census Data API returns no value for either).

How many new stores survive?

BLS does not publish survival rates for clothing stores on their own; its Business Employment Dynamics tables cover all retail trade (NAICS 44-45, every kind of store). Of the retail establishments that opened in the year ended March 2025, 84.5% were still operating a year later, in March 2026 (BLS). Of those that opened in the year ended March 2023, 68.2% were still open three years later (BLS), so 31.8% had closed (our calculation); of the 2021 cohort, 55.2% survived five years (BLS) and 44.8% did not (our calculation); and of the 2016 cohort, 43.5% were still open after ten years (BLS). These count locations with employees only; owners who work alone are not in them.

Why do clothing store counts differ?

Each counter counts something different, so the U.S. clothing store count runs from 81,417 (BLS QCEW, 2025) to 90,230 (2022 Economic Census) for businesses with employees, plus 250,712 owner-only businesses in 2024. BLS QCEW and Census County Business Patterns count locations with employees, and the Economic Census counts them only in census years; Nonemployer Statistics counts businesses with no employees from tax records; the clothing chains' own filings count their stores. Since 2022 the BLS, Economic Census and Nonemployer counts use the 2022 code for all clothing and clothing accessories retailers (NAICS 458110), which also takes in online-only clothing sellers, while County Business Patterns 2023 still uses the 2017 clothing store code (NAICS 4481).

QCEW's 2022 annual average of 82,022 and the Economic Census's 90,230 for the same year use the same code but different sources (state unemployment insurance records averaged over the year, against the Census Bureau's count of establishments that operated during 2022), so they do not match. The 2017 Economic Census's 96,419 clothing stores and County Business Patterns' 83,287 in 2023 use the older store-only code. Adding the 241,235 nonemployers of 2023 to the 83,287 employer stores of the same year makes 74.3% of all clothing businesses owner-only, and since 2022 the nonemployer count includes sellers who sell only online.

How often do public companies mention clothing stores and clothing boutiques in their annual reports?

322 Form 10-K annual reports filed from 2001 to 2025 contained the phrase “clothing store” or “clothing stores”, by our count with the SEC’s EDGAR full-text search (our calculation). 91 companies filed them (our calculation). The count peaked at 22 10-Ks filed in 2007 (our calculation) and has fallen since: 3 in 2024, 2 in 2025 and 2 from January 1 to November 12, 2026 (our calculation). Over the ten years 2001-2010 there were 183 such 10-Ks; over the ten years 2016-2025 there were 70 (our calculation).

“Clothing boutique” is rarer still. Only 3 Form 10-Ks filed from 2001 to 2025 used “clothing boutique” or “clothing boutiques” (our calculation), and 7 annual reports of any form, counting old small-company 10-KSB reports (our calculation). None was filed in 2024, 2025 or 2026. Most are biographies of a filer’s director who once ran or co-owned a boutique; the others describe the Denver Merchandise Mart’s apparel shows for women’s clothing boutique buyers; and The Buckle’s 2019 10-K names small specialty stores “such as women’s clothing boutiques” among its competitors. Boutiques are small private businesses, and they almost never appear in SEC filings.

126 of the 322 clothing-store 10-Ks came from companies with an SEC industry code for apparel and accessory stores, among them Aéropostale, American Eagle, The Buckle, Chico’s, Destination XL (once Casual Male), Hot Topic, Men’s Wearhouse, Syms and Urban Outfitters (our calculation).

How we counted: we queried EDGAR full-text search (efts.sec.gov) on November 12, 2026 for each exact phrase, read every page of hits, and counted each Form 10-K once by its filing year, even when the phrase appears in several of its documents. EDGAR full-text search covers filings from 2001 on. Older 10-KSB and 10-K405 reports are counted in their own columns, not in the 10-K totals. The count misses other wordings such as “apparel retailer” or “specialty store”, and the industry code is the one EDGAR lists for each company today. The per-year counts, filer names and query links are in edgar-clothing-10k-counts.csv.

Which companies mention clothing stores in their 10-Ks now, and why?

7 Form 10-K or 10-K/A filings filed from January 2024 to November 12, 2026 contained “clothing store” or “clothing stores”, from just 3 companies (our calculation). We read the passage around every mention. The Buckle, an apparel retailer, says it began in 1948 as Mills Clothing, “a conventional men’s clothing store with only one location” (The Buckle Form 10-K, fiscal 2025). Kidpik, an online kids’ clothing subscription seller, named online and “traditional brick and mortar clothing stores” as competitors. UPAY, a loan software company, quotes a South African credit law whose lenders include “retailers such as furniture and clothing stores”. The passage, class and filing link for each hit are in edgar-clothing-10k-contexts.csv.

How many stores do the public clothing chains run, and how many are in Florida?

Gap Inc. is the largest by store count: it had 2,474 company-operated stores in the United States, Canada, Japan and Taiwan at January 31, 2026 (Gap Inc. Form 10-K, fiscal 2025). Among the chains whose filings list stores by state, Citi Trends has the most in Florida: 51 (Citi Trends Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) of its 590 stores (Citi Trends Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), or 8.6% (our calculation). Zumiez had 35 Florida stores (Zumiez Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), 6.2% of its U.S. and Puerto Rico stores (our calculation), and The Buckle 20 (The Buckle Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), 4.5% of its stores (our calculation).

Store counts are each company’s own, at its fiscal year end (January 31, 2026 for most; March 28, 2026 for Boot Barn; February 1, 2026 for lululemon and Duluth Trading), and they do not all count the same things: Gap’s and A&F’s exclude franchise stores, American Eagle’s includes licensed stores, Zumiez’s include Canada, Europe and Australia, and Destination XL’s total adds 258 DXL retail stores to its outlets and Casual Male XL stores (Destination XL Group Form 10-K, fiscal 2025). Online sellers Lulu’s and Revolve are covered on our ecommerce video statistics page.

How much do public clothing chains spend on advertising?

Gap Inc. spent $778 million on advertising in fiscal 2025 (Gap Inc. Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) on net sales of $15,366 million (Gap Inc. Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), or 5.1% (our calculation). Abercrombie & Fitch’s marketing costs were $308,293 thousand (Abercrombie & Fitch Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) on net sales of $5,266,292 thousand (Abercrombie & Fitch Form 10-K, fiscal 2025): 5.9% (our calculation). The smaller chains, each by our division of its own advertising figure by its own sales:

• Duluth Trading: $58.4 million of advertising and direct mail (Duluth Trading Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) on net sales of $565.2 million (Duluth Trading Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), or 10.3% (our calculation), the highest share of the store chains we could compute.
• J.Jill: $52,432 thousand of marketing (J.Jill Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) on net sales of $596,549 thousand (J.Jill Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), or 8.8% (our calculation).
• Destination XL: $26.7 million (Destination XL Group Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) on total sales of $435,017 thousand (Destination XL Group Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), or 6.1% (our calculation).
• Torrid: $57.4 million of marketing (Torrid Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) on net sales of $1,000,092 thousand (Torrid Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), or 5.7% (our calculation).
• Tilly’s: $25.3 million (Tilly’s Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) on total net sales of $553.6 million (Tilly’s Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), or 4.6% (our calculation).
• The Buckle: $23,201 thousand of marketing (The Buckle Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) on net sales of $1,297,835 thousand (The Buckle Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), or 1.8% (our calculation).
• Zumiez: $9.4 million, net of sponsorships and vendor reimbursements (Zumiez Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), on net sales of $929.1 million (Zumiez Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), or 1.0% (our calculation).
• Cato: about $4,908,000 (The Cato Corporation Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) on total revenues of $653.8 million (The Cato Corporation Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), or 0.8% (our calculation). Citi Trends: $1.3 million of marketing (Citi Trends Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) on net sales of $820.0 million (Citi Trends Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), or 0.2% (our calculation).

The online-only sellers spend far more: Lulu’s advertising was $50.4 million in 2025 (Lulu’s Form 10-K, 2025) on net revenue of $282,284 thousand (Lulu’s Form 10-K, 2025), or 17.9% (our calculation), and Revolve’s marketing was 14.3% of net sales (Revolve Form 10-K, 2025). The companies count advertising differently (gross or net of vendor money, catalogs and direct mail in or out), so the shares compare only roughly.

How much clothing do the public chains sell online?

Torrid sells the most online of the store chains: e-commerce was 64% of its net sales in fiscal 2025 (Torrid Form 10-K, fiscal 2025). J.Jill’s Direct channel, mostly its website, was about 48% of net sales (J.Jill Form 10-K, fiscal 2025). American Eagle’s digital sales were 39% of total revenue (American Eagle Outfitters Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), and Gap Inc.’s online sales were $5,981 million (Gap Inc. Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), 38.9% of net sales (our calculation). Destination XL’s direct sales were 28.7% of total sales (Destination XL Group Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), and Tilly’s online net sales were 22.1% of its total (Tilly’s Form 10-K, fiscal 2025).

lululemon, with net revenue of $11.1 billion (lululemon athletica Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), gives no online share of sales in its 10-K. At the other end, The Buckle’s online revenues were 16.7% of net sales (The Buckle Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), Boot Barn’s e-commerce was 10.4% of its $2.254 billion of net sales (Boot Barn Form 10-K, fiscal 2026), and Cato says its e-commerce sales were less than 5% of total sales (The Cato Corporation Form 10-K, fiscal 2025).

What do clothing retailers’ filings say about social media, video and influencers?

Influencers run through the filings. Tilly’s says “We also partner with influencers and celebrities to drive brand awareness and create excitement for new products” (Tilly’s Form 10-K, fiscal 2025). Abercrombie & Fitch partners with brand representatives, influencers, celebrities and athletes (Abercrombie & Fitch Form 10-K, fiscal 2025) and runs brand accounts on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, Snapchat and Pinterest (Abercrombie & Fitch Form 10-K, fiscal 2025). Gap Inc. lists relationships with athletes, performers, influencers and other celebrities among its risk factors (Gap Inc. Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), and counts “digital and social media” costs in its advertising expense (digital and social media) (Gap Inc. Form 10-K, fiscal 2025). Citi Trends warns that “Partnerships with social media content creators may expose us to reputational or other risks” (Citi Trends Form 10-K, fiscal 2025).

• Urban Outfitters talks with customers “most notably via Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and TikTok” (Urban Outfitters Form 10-K, fiscal 2026). American Eagle uses social media “including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and others” (American Eagle Outfitters Form 10-K, fiscal 2025).
• Boot Barn maintains Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X accounts (Boot Barn Form 10-K, fiscal 2026), and says its posts “routinely get thousands of likes, hundreds of shares and dozens of comments each” (Boot Barn Form 10-K, fiscal 2026).
• Torrid’s Casting Call events feature plus- and mid-size models, celebrities, bloggers and other influencers (Torrid Form 10-K, fiscal 2025). lululemon’s marketing leverages owned and paid channels, its “ambassador network”, events and content (lululemon athletica Form 10-K, fiscal 2025).
• Streaming shows up in two store chains’ marketing lists. Duluth Trading uses “Linear, Connected and Addressable TV, streaming video, and on-demand audio” (Duluth Trading Form 10-K, fiscal 2025), and Destination XL’s programs include social media and “streaming media” (Destination XL Group Form 10-K, fiscal 2025).

The online sellers lean hardest on creators. Revolve says it has “thousands of influencers enrolled in our proprietary brand ambassador program” (Revolve Form 10-K, 2025). Lulu’s counts over 8.9 million followers across Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, X, Threads and YouTube (Lulu’s Form 10-K, 2025), and its ambassador partnerships include “nano- and micro-influencers, college ambassadors, and celebrity” partners (Lulu’s Form 10-K, 2025). Revolve, which accepts returns for a full refund, carried a returns reserve of $77.0 million at December 31, 2025 (Revolve Form 10-K, 2025), on 2025 net sales of $1,225,682 thousand (Revolve Form 10-K, 2025). None of these filings reports views, video budgets or sales from video.

Two former filers are dated: Chico’s FAS was taken private in 2024 and Express filed for bankruptcy protection in 2024, so neither has a current 10-K.

What must the label on a garment a clothing store sells say?

Under the FTC's textile rules, 16 CFR part 303 (eCFR), the label on a garment must give three things: the generic name and percentage by weight of every fiber present at 5 percent or more (eCFR), the name or registered identification number (RN) of the manufacturer or of a business marketing or handling the garment (eCFR), and the country where it was made. Text as read on November 12, 2026; this is not legal advice.

• A fiber under 5 percent of total fiber weight is listed as "other fiber" rather than by name, unless it has a clearly established functional significance; the rule's own example is spandex (eCFR).
• The FTC issues RNs to qualified U.S. residents who apply at rn.ftc.gov (eCFR).
• On anything with a neck, the country of origin goes on a label at the inside center of the neck, midway between the shoulder seams or next to another label there (eCFR).
• The label must be durable enough to stay on through distribution, sale and resale, until sold and delivered to the ultimate consumer (eCFR).
• A garment made in the United States from imported material must say so, for example "Made in USA of imported fabric" (eCFR).
• A garment's description in a mail order catalog or promotional material must say clearly whether it was made in U.S.A., imported, or both (eCFR). The rule's definition of that material covers anything sent to shoppers in print or by electronic means, other than broadcast, that asks them to buy without seeing the product (eCFR).
• A fiber percentage on the label may be off by up to 3 percent of total fiber weight before the garment counts as misbranded (eCFR).
• The rules exclude secondhand household textile articles that are visibly secondhand or marked as such (eCFR), and the Act counts articles of wearing apparel as household textile articles (govinfo). That is the exclusion a thrift or consignment store's used stock falls under.
• Wool garments come under a separate set of FTC rules, 16 CFR part 300 (eCFR). The Wool Products Labeling Act's own civil penalty is now up to $698 (eCFR).

The labelling and safety rules side by side:

What must a clothing care label say, and who has to provide it?

The FTC's Care Labeling Rule, 16 CFR part 423, puts the duty on manufacturers and importers of clothing, including any person or organization that directs or controls the manufacture or importation (eCFR). So a boutique that has its own-label clothing made may be covered; a store that only buys finished, labelled brands from U.S. suppliers is not named.

• The label must say what regular care the garment needs, in general a washing or a drycleaning instruction, and must warn against any procedure a consumer or professional cleaner could reasonably be expected to use that would harm it (eCFR).
• A washing instruction need not give a water temperature if regular washing in hot water up to 145 degrees F will not harm the garment (eCFR).
• For this rule, clothing includes hosiery but is defined excluding footwear, gloves, hats and other items worn only on the head or hands (eCFR).

When can a clothing store call a garment Made in USA?

Only when final assembly or processing and all significant processing happen in the United States and all or virtually all of its ingredients or components are made and sourced in the United States (eCFR), under the FTC's Made in USA Labeling Rule, 16 CFR part 323, in force since August 13, 2021 (Federal Register).

• The rule covers a Made in the United States seal, mark, tag or stamp shown in a mail order catalog or promotional material, which the rule defines to include material sent in print or by electronic means that asks shoppers to buy without seeing the product, so an online product page fits (eCFR).
• A violation is treated as a violation of a rule under section 18 of the FTC Act (eCFR). That is the hook for civil penalties: a knowing violation of an FTC rule can cost up to $53,088 per violation (eCFR), the maximum for penalties assessed after January 17, 2025 (eCFR).
• The textile rules add their own origin wording for garments made here from imported fabric (above).

Which safety rules cover the clothing and children's hoodies a store sells?

Two CPSC rules: all clothing fabric must pass the flammability test in 16 CFR part 1610, and children's jackets and sweatshirts in sizes 2T to 16 with drawstrings that do not meet the ASTM drawstring standard are a substantial product hazard (eCFR) under 16 CFR part 1120, in force since August 18, 2011 (Federal Register).

• Flammability, in a line. A plain-surface fabric counts as normal flammability when it takes 3.5 seconds or more to burn through in the test (eCFR); Class 3 fabrics are dangerously flammable and may not be used for clothing (eCFR). Plain-surface fabrics weighing 2.6 ounces per square yard or more need no testing to back a guaranty (eCFR).
• Hood and neck drawstrings are banned on children's upper outerwear up to size 12 (eCFR); a garment labelled with a size range that reaches into those sizes is still covered.
• Waist and bottom drawstrings on sizes 2T to 16 may extend no more than 3 inches outside the channel with the garment fully expanded (Federal Register), with no toggles, knots, and other attachments at the free ends (Federal Register). CPSC treats girls' and boys' XL as size 16 (eCFR).
• Listed products are subject to the reporting and recall provisions of the Consumer Product Safety Act and are refused entry into the United States (eCFR), which matters to a boutique that imports children's wear itself.
• Why the rule exists: CPSC knew of 56 reports of children caught by neck or hood drawstrings in the years before the rule (Federal Register), and 32% of them were fatal (Federal Register). For the years with complete reporting, the yearly average of reported deaths fell by about 75 percent after the voluntary standard (Federal Register).

How fast must a clothing store ship an online or phone order?

Within the time the store states or, if it states none, within 30 days of a properly completed order (eCFR), under the FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule, 16 CFR part 435 (eCFR). A store that cannot ship on time must offer the buyer the choice of accepting the delay or cancelling for a refund (eCFR).

• A refund owed under the rule is prompt only if it is made within 7 working days for cash, check or money order payments (eCFR).
• The rule sets shipping and refund timing for orders; it does not set a return policy. Florida's refund-sign law, below, covers a store's refund policy.

What rules cover a clothing store's try-on videos, gifted outfits and reviews?

The FTC's Endorsement Guides, 16 CFR part 255 (eCFR), in their current form from July 26, 2023 (eCFR): when a creator posts a try-on haul, styles a gifted outfit or is paid for a store visit, a connection viewers would not expect has to be disclosed clearly. One example in the Guides says a platform's built-in label in small white text, on a post that appears for only five seconds, is easy to miss and not clear and conspicuous (eCFR).

• The FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials rule, 16 CFR part 465 (eCFR), took effect on October 21, 2024 (Federal Register).
• Section 465.4 bars a store from paying or rewarding customers for reviews that must express a particular sentiment, positive or negative (eCFR).
• Section 465.8 bars buying fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views, known or that should be known to be fake, to misrepresent influence for a commercial purpose (eCFR).
• A knowing violation of the reviews rule can cost up to $53,088 per violation. The Endorsement Guides are guides, not a rule, so that penalty does not attach to them as such.
• On YouTube, a creator who features a sponsorship ticks the paid promotion box, which adds a disclosure label at the beginning of your video, in YouTube's words (YouTube Help).

What Florida laws cover a clothing store's returns and back-to-school sales?

Florida's back-to-school sales tax holiday now runs every year from July 20 through August 20 (Florida Statutes) and covers clothing, wallets and bags priced at $100 or less per item (Florida Statutes), under the current Florida Statutes. The subsection is headed "Annual Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday" (Florida Statutes) and carries no expiry date.

• What counts as clothing. Any article of wearing apparel worn on or about the body, excluding watches, watchbands, jewelry, umbrellas, and handkerchiefs, plus all footwear except skis, swim fins, roller blades and skates (Florida Statutes). Handbags, backpacks, fanny packs and diaper bags qualify; briefcases, suitcases and other garment bags do not.
• Where it does not apply. Sales within a theme park or entertainment complex, a hotel or other public lodging establishment, or an airport (Florida Statutes): a boutique inside a hotel, a theme park or an airport collects tax as usual.
• How it became permanent. Section 45 (Laws of Florida) of chapter 2025-208 (Laws of Florida) added the holiday to the sales tax exemptions, for sales during the month of August (Laws of Florida); the Governor approved it on June 30, 2025 (Laws of Florida).
• The latest change. Section 27 (Laws of Florida) of chapter 2026-239 (Laws of Florida) replaced "during the month of August" with July 20 through August 20. The Governor approved it on June 29, 2026 (Laws of Florida), and the act took effect on July 1, 2026 (Laws of Florida), so the new dates applied to the first holiday after it.
• Refund signs. A store that gives no cash refund, credit or exchange must post a sign saying so at the point of sale. A store without the sign must refund unused merchandise within 7 days of purchase (Florida Statutes), and the state may fine it up to $100 per violation (Florida Statutes). The law does not apply to goods custom made or custom altered at the customer's request (Florida Statutes), such as a dress hemmed at the customer's request.

What do the popular clothing numbers really say?

Four of the most repeated fashion numbers do not say what they are used to say. The online-returns share that gets quoted for clothing started as a figure for every product bought online, the share of global emissions in the headline has no study behind it that we could find, the landfill share is a world estimate of fibre, not a count of thrown-out clothes, and the “video lifts conversions 80%” line comes from a video vendor’s client, not a clothing store. We traced each to the oldest source we could read and say below what that source counted. Several usual sources bar automated readers, so we did not read them: the Business of Fashion, Women’s Wear Daily, UNEP, Happy Returns and Optoro in robots.txt, Narvar in its site terms (which bar robots and crawlers), and Appriss Retail by our page rules; Coresight Research allows only personal, non-commercial use of its site, and mckinsey.com did not answer. UN Climate Change’s site returned a bot wall, so we read its 2018 pages through the Internet Archive. Every “earliest” below is the earliest we found.

“30% (or 40%, or up to 50%) of clothes bought online are returned”

The best-known version began as a figure for all online purchases, not clothing, and it came with no counter. The earliest copy we found is an April 2016 infographic post by Invesp, a conversion-rate consultancy, which says at least 30% of all products ordered online are returned (Invesp, archived), against 8.89% in brick-and-mortar stores (Invesp, archived). It names no survey, sample or year for either number, and the live post still prints 30% (Invesp).

Repeaters then turned it into a clothing number. A 2025 list of clothing return figures on the blog of Best Colorful Socks, a sock seller, gives the same pair as a 2025 report’s 30% online apparel return rate (Best Colorful Socks). The same list credits Vogue Business with online apparel returns that can hit 50% in seasonal spikes (Best Colorful Socks) and the New Yorker with rates that can reach around 40% (Best Colorful Socks), without linking to either. It also shows how a share of shoppers becomes a share of purchases: it reports that 25% of consumers returned clothing bought online in the past year and calls that one in four online apparel purchases (Best Colorful Socks). Those are different counts.

The counted figures are lower and cover every category. In the 2025 Retail Returns Landscape, from the National Retail Federation (a retail trade group) and Happy Returns (a UPS company that sells returns services), retailers estimate that 19.3% of online sales will be returned in 2025 (NRF) and 15.8% of annual sales across all channels (NRF). Those are retailers’ own estimates of sales value, from a summer 2025 survey of 358 ecommerce professionals at large U.S. merchants (NRF), next to a survey of 2,006 consumers who had returned an online purchase (NRF). The 2024 edition put returns at 16.9% of annual sales (NRF), from 249 retail professionals (NRF) and 2,007 consumers who had returned an online purchase in the past year (NRF). Use instead: “Large U.S. retailers expect 19.3% of online sales to come back in 2025, across all products (NRF and Happy Returns).” We could not read a counted, apparel-only online return rate from a source that allows it; if you quote one, name the seller or panel that counted it and whether it counts items, orders or dollars.

“Fashion makes 10% of global emissions, more than aviation and shipping combined”

No study we read puts fashion at that share. The comparison with aviation and shipping comes from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s A New Textiles Economy (2017), which estimated greenhouse gas emissions from textiles production at 1.2 billion tonnes a year in 2015, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined (Ellen MacArthur Foundation). That counts production only and gives tonnes, not a share. The same report projected that the industry could use more than 26% of the carbon budget for a two-degree warming pathway by 2050 (Ellen MacArthur Foundation), a projection, not today’s share.

The lower, rounded wordings trace to Quantis. Its Measuring Fashion study (2018), a life-cycle assessment by the environmental consultancy with ClimateWorks Foundation, put apparel and footwear together at 8.1% of global climate impacts in 2016 (Quantis, archived): apparel 6.7% (Quantis, archived) and footwear about 1.4% (Quantis, archived). The same page says the two industries generated between 5 and 10% of global pollution impacts in 2016 (Quantis, archived), a range across its impact indicators, not a climate share.

The round figure first shows up, as far as we found, in a UN Climate Change (UNFCCC) news item of 6 September 2018, which says the fashion industry contributes to around 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions (UNFCCC, archived) and that it consumes more energy than the aviation and shipping industry combined (UNFCCC, archived), with no study cited for either. The Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action that UNFCCC launched that December states no share at all; its signatories set a target to cut their emissions 30 percent by 2030 (UNFCCC, archived). A September 2019 World Bank feature then said fashion is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined (World Bank, archived), crediting UNEP and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation; the Foundation’s report has the tonnes, not the share, and UNEP’s pages bar our readers.

The lowest published share is also the newest. Global Fashion Agenda and McKinsey’s Fashion on Climate (2020) estimated that the industry produced around 2.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 (Global Fashion Agenda), equalling 4% of the global total (Global Fashion Agenda). Use instead: one counted estimate with its counter, scope and year: “apparel and footwear made about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 (Global Fashion Agenda and McKinsey)”, or Quantis’s 8.1% for 2016, labelled as a different method. Do not write 10%.

“85% of textiles end up in landfills”

The landfill share has no counter we could find, and the nearest counted figure is a world estimate of fibre, not of discarded U.S. clothing. The same September 2018 UNFCCC item says 85% of textiles end up in landfills or are incinerated (UNFCCC, archived), with no source or year, and it counts burning as well as landfill. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s 2017 report says 87% of the material used for clothing production is landfilled or incinerated after its final use (Ellen MacArthur Foundation), and that one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or incinerated every second, worldwide (Ellen MacArthur Foundation); the World Bank’s 2019 feature repeats it as 87% of fiber input (World Bank, archived). Use instead: for the United States, EPA’s own figures for textiles generated, recycled, burned and landfilled (see the spending section), and say whether a share counts landfill alone or landfill plus incineration.

“Video lifts conversions 80%”

The figure is a best case from one video vendor, EyeView, about a client website, not a clothing store. In February 2009 EyeView’s blog said viewers of its videos for one client, UMOO, were 80% more likely to become depositing users, comparing viewers with non-viewers (EyeView, archived). That comparison does not test what adding a video does. By August 2010 Unbounce, a landing-page software seller, wrote that a study by eyeviewdigital.com showed video on landing pages can increase conversion by 80% (Unbounce, archived).

The larger later evidence points the other way. Unbounce’s own 2021 analysis of about 35,000 customer landing pages in each of three periods (Unbounce) concluded that video appears to have a minimal or negative impact on landing-page performance (Unbounce). Its April 2025 article of landing-page examples still says landing pages with video can increase conversions by 80% (Unbounce). Fashion sellers repeat it with no test: a 2025 list of fashion product-page statistics on the Best Colorful Socks blog says adding videos to fashion product pages can increase conversions by up to 80% (Best Colorful Socks), naming no study. We found no conversion test by a clothing store or boutique behind any of them. Use instead: “Unbounce’s 2021 study of about 35,000 landing pages per period found video had a minimal or negative effect; we found no conversion test by a clothing store.”

Every popular claim our research pages trace, 925 in all, is on one page: popular video statistics, fact-checked.

How we built this page

We started from the questions people search for about clothing boutique video statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 554 figures from 44 publishers.

On November 12, 2026, each sourced figure on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording: BLS establishment and pay counts (Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages open data files), occupation wages and consumer prices (through the BLS data API), business survival (an archived BLS table) and household spending (archived Consumer Expenditure Surveys releases, because bls.gov refuses scripts); Census County Business Patterns, Nonemployer Statistics, the 2017 and 2022 Economic Census and its 2022 bridge table, monthly retail trade and population estimates (through the Census data API and data files); a BEA personal consumption release; EPA’s textiles and nondurable goods pages; eCFR, the Federal Register and the U.S. Code; the Florida Statutes and the Laws of Florida; YouTube Help; SEC filings on EDGAR; the National Retail Federation’s survey pages; and journal articles (PubMed and PMC records re-read through NCBI’s E-utilities, because the pages answer scripts with a bot check). Two consultancies, a charity, an industry forum, the UN climate secretariat, the World Bank, a sock seller’s blog and a landing-page software seller appear in the origins section, labelled as the counters or repeaters they are; the UN item, the consultancy report and the World Bank feature were read through Internet Archive captures. Our YouTube figures come from the YouTube Data API and our filing counts from EDGAR full-text search. One archived 2009 vendor post behind the “80%” claim is copied from our earlier pages and checked by hand, because the vendor’s robots rules bar our agents. We left out sources whose robots rules or terms bar our agents or that we could not read: the Business of Fashion, Women’s Wear Daily, the UN Environment Programme and Happy Returns’ own site (robots rules; NRF’s pages on their joint returns report were read), Optoro (its robots file carries text aimed at AI agents), Poshmark, Whatnot and Narvar (terms ban automated access), thredUP and Faire (terms we could not read), Coresight (paid reports), the Florida Department of Revenue’s sales tax holiday pages (robots rules), the American Apparel & Footwear Association’s ApparelStats (members only) and the Commerce Department’s apparel import data (served only in an interactive dashboard). Nothing here is legal, tax or business advice.

We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.

Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:

This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.

Limitations

• There is no boutique industry code. NAICS 458110 counts all clothing and clothing accessories retailers, from one-room boutiques to national chains, and since the 2022 code change it also counts online-only clothing sellers, which made 30.3% of the industry’s 2022 sales. Series that cross 2022 are not like for like, and County Business Patterns 2023 still uses the older clothing store code. Our owner-only share sets Nonemployer Statistics under the new code against County Business Patterns under the old one, so it leans high.
• Our YouTube read follows YouTube’s ranking. The 507 videos are what YouTube’s search returned for ‘clothing store’, ‘boutique’ and ‘clothing boutique’ (the top 200 results for each, sorted by views, with no country filter) on November 12, 2026. It is not a census of clothing store video: kids’ and doll channels hold much of the views, and 38.5% of the ‘boutique’ results were not about clothing. View counts are lifetime snapshots and include paid views. We read titles and channel text, not the videos themselves. Family channels built around a child and personal uploads by private people are published only as a class and counts.
• The studies measure stated intentions. Most of the journal studies are questionnaire surveys, many of them in China and other Asian countries, and they report what people say they would do, not what they bought. NRF’s figures are planned spending from a retail trade group’s survey.
• Few clothing companies file with the SEC. The public chains on this page are not typical boutiques, and their filings define advertising, online sales and stores in different ways, so the shares between them compare only roughly. EDGAR full-text search finds a phrase, not a topic; we read every 2024 to November 12, 2026 hit by hand.
• Some government series are old or partial. EPA’s newest textiles year is 2018. Consumer spending figures are averages per consumer unit in current dollars, not adjusted for inflation, and BLS notes that fieldwork stopped in October and November 2025.
• Rules and origins as read on November 12, 2026. This is not legal or tax advice. Every “earliest we found” in the origins section rests on web pages and reports we could read; newspaper databases were not searched, and several of the usual sources bar our agents.

How to cite this page

For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/clothing-boutique-video-statistics#DRV-066. To cite the page as a whole:

Mark Studios. "Clothing Boutique Video Statistics." Last verified Nov 12, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/clothing-boutique-video-statistics

@misc{markstudios_clothing_boutique_video_statistics_2026,
  author = {{Mark Studios}},
  title = {{Clothing Boutique Video Statistics}},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/clothing-boutique-video-statistics},
  note = {Last verified 2026-11-12}
}

Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.

Sources

Download the evidence table (CSV)

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113. UN Climate Change (UNFCCC secretariat), Milestone Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action launched (2018-12-10). Accessed 2026-11-12.
114. World Bank (feature story; repeater), How Much Do Our Wardrobes Cost to the Environment? (2019-09-23). Accessed 2026-11-12.
115. Global Fashion Agenda with McKinsey & Company (industry forum; consultancy), Fashion on Climate (2020-08-26). Accessed 2026-11-12.
116. EyeView Digital (video production and testing vendor; sold the videos it tested), UMOO - a prime beef example of EyeView's success (2009-02-10). Accessed 2026-11-12.
117. Unbounce (landing-page software seller), The benefits of using video on landing pages (2010-08). Accessed 2026-11-12.
118. Unbounce (landing-page software seller; analysis of its own customers' pages), Video on landing pages means more conversions, right? Wrong. Here's why (2021-08-26). Accessed 2026-11-12.
119. Unbounce (landing-page software seller; repeater), 15 high-converting landing page examples (+ why they work) (2025-04-06). Accessed 2026-11-12.
120. Best Colorful Socks (sock seller's blog; repeater), Fashion Product Page Optimization Statistics (2025-08-03). Accessed 2026-11-12.

Update policy and change log

We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is February 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.

• Nov 12, 2026: First published with 554 figures from 44 publishers, each checked against its original source.