The apparel investment themes to watch in 2022

GlobalData picked out the driving forces in recruitment, deal-making and innovation (through patent filings) in 2021 and measured how far up or down the investment rankings each had travelled compared with the previous year. The results uncover which forces have the most momentum going into 2022 and could therefore establish themselves as critically important influencers.

Health and safety had the strongest momentum when it came to apparel industry hiring patterns, climbing 25 places to rank 19th this year. This meant there were 99 health and safety roles sought per every 10,000 job postings in the sector in 2021, a significant increase.

Sensory and indulgence was the second fastest emerging hiring theme (up 10 ranking spots), while smart and connected came in third (up by two ranking spots).

Themes, as referenced throughout this article, are defined by Global Data, from whom our data is taken, as any issue that keeps a CEO awake at night. Companies that fail to spot the important themes within their industry risk being unprepared for their future and, ultimately, failure. Global Data tags millions of data points with these themes across its proprietary databases on a daily basis, making it possible to track their momentum over time.

Our analysis found the fastest rising themes tended to differ depending on the investment metric being analysed. ESG-related themes, such as ethics and governance featured heavily across the board as emerging forces in recruitment, while themes related to disruptive technologies tended to be the biggest risers across mergers, acquisitions and other deal-based investments.

Deals where e-commerce played a part enjoyed the biggest increase in ranking among the apparel supply chain companies included in the analysis, rising nine places higher this year compared to last. Online retail was the second fastest emerging dealmaking theme (up five ranking spots), while millennials / gen Z came in third (up by five ranking spots).