Sportswear is one of the biggest sections of modern fashion and clothing, with legendary brand Nike making the most yearly revenue of a single fashion brand. Globally, the activewear market was worth $160bn in 2020 and is expected to climb to $267bn in 2028.
With its departure over the last decade from functional to fashionable, countless brands that were formerly only worn to sweat in can now be seen everywhere you look. Workout culture, comfort dressing and trainers obsession have continued to drive sportswear to ever-greater heights in the world of fashion.
What makes a good sportswear brand?
While the obvious brands like Nike and Adidas dominate our shared consciousness of what makes a good sportswear brand, there are countless factors that brands should be aware of in terms of customer satisfaction and attention that the main players appear to not be so concerned about.
In a period of rapidly rising focus on e-commerce for fashion brands, newcomers are making the most of the digital landscape to keep customers happy and build up their names. In a study that analyses site visits, online review scores, returns and customer service searches and social media sentiment, there were some unexpected results.
The most liked fashion brands online
| Rank | Brand | Monthly Site Visits | Trustpilot Rating | Returns as % of Global Searches | Customer Service as % of Global Searches | Positive Social Sentiment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Puma | 7,200,000 | 3.7 | 0.04% | 0.07% | 26% |
| 2 | New Balance | 6,300,000 | 2.3 | 0.06% | 0.07% | 78% |
| 3 | Ivy Park | 83,300 | 3.0 | 0.01% | 0.00% | 95% |
| 4 | Champion | 1,400,000 | 2.2 | 0.03% | 0.05% | 81% |
| 5 | Gymshark | 4,600,000 | 4.2 | 0.60% | 0.15% | 98% |
| 6 | Nike | 98,700,000 | 1.8 | 0.06% | 0.20% | 60% |
| 6 | Ellesse | 119,900 | 2.3 | 0.06% | 0.02% | 94% |
| 8 | Adidas | 18,900,000 | 1.9 | 0.10% | 0.11% | 57% |
| 9 | Diadora | 438,300 | 2.6 | 0.03% | 0.07% | 93% |
| 10 | Reebok | 3,800,000 | 2.1 | 0.09% | 0.11% | 91% |
While Nike and Adidas are often the first that come to mind when discussing sportswear, the clothing and trainer giants didn’t place in the top 5 of this study, owing to poor online review scores and higher than average returns or customer service searches proportional to their overall search volume.
Puma’s high monthly site visits and strong review score helped it secure the top spot despite having one of the lowest social media sentiment scores, highlighting how valuable each facet of a brand’s online identity is to customers.
Site Visits
Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, e-commerce has seen a dramatic rise in all categories as in-person shopping was reduced to almost nothing. While e-commerce has dropped slightly since the relaxation of restrictions, its overall use is still much higher than it was before the start of the pandemic.
In the UK, e-commerce sales make up more than a quarter of all retail sales. This reached a peak of more than a third during the pandemic but has since reduced slightly. Still, this is significant, especially when considering that the percentage of e-commerce sales in the US is only around 12%-13% post-lockdowns.
Using data from SimilarWeb, we measured monthly site visits for each of the brands in the study to determine the most popular sportswear brands. This was used as an indicating factor as many online shoppers still don’t interact with brands they buy from beyond visiting the website, providing an accurate understanding of the volume of potential customers a brand receives.
Trustpilot Ratings
Online reviews are more important than ever, a recent study found that 94% of online shoppers have been dissuaded by a bad review. While many of the world’s biggest sportswear brands have enough brand recognition and physical presence to warrant not paying attention to their online reviews, this is still an important metric for customer satisfaction.
Nike, Adidas, Asics and Under Armour all have a rating lower than 2. As much as 80% of shoppers wouldn’t typically buy from businesses with a review of less than 3, while this isn’t necessarily affecting the popularity of these big-name brands, their poor scores do suggest an issue with customer satisfaction.
Returns and Customer Service Searches
Many fashion businesses now have straightforward returns policies and accessible customer service offerings. This is why searches for these services are a relatively small portion of their overall search traffic on Google. However, a higher proportion of customer service searches to general online searches could suggest difficulties in the process that aren’t being met by the website or the delivery information given to customers.
For this reason, businesses with a higher volume of returns and customer service searches proportional to their total online searches have been given a lower score. Columbia Sportswear is the only brand with returns searches at 1% of their total search volume and Fabletics is the only brand with customer service searches over 1%, highlighting how this isn’t necessarily the biggest issue for online retailers.
Social Sentiment
Social media is a huge marketing channel for online fashion businesses, helping to reach customers where they’re spending most of their time and perfectly slotting into the aesthetic-first approach of platforms like Instagram.
While brands work hard to build their following online, this isn’t an equitable reflection of their customer appreciation, which is why we’ve used data from BuzzSumo to analyse the sentiment of reactions to social posts which mentioned these brands in the last year.
The reactions were categorised as positive (Love and Wow) and negative (Angry, Haha and Sad). Most brands received mainly positive reactions, with only Columbia Sportswear, Fila and Puma receiving less than 50% positive reactions.
To differentiate Puma the brand from news stories about the animal, we conducted an advanced search for stories including “Puma” and “sport”.
Dedicated audiences
Sportswear brands are deeply entrenched into our society at this point so audiences are dedicated despite their online presence, as is clear from Nike’s domination of the sector but apparently weaker performance in the study.
However, for newer brands like Gymshark and Sweaty Betty, customer satisfaction is essential to building this initial audience, which might be why these brands perform so well on review sites and social media.
The most liked luxury sportswear brands online
Using similar stats, we’ve also analysed luxury sportswear, which is consistently climbing in status and value, even for those that don’t fit into the category of the ultra-wealthy.
| Rank | Brand | Global Searches | Yearly Search Change | Trustpilot Reviews | Positive Social Sentiment | Instagram Following |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Adanola | 17,000 | 162.50% | 4.8 | 100% | 269,000 |
| 2 | Canada Goose | 1,300,000 | 55.56% | 2.2 | 77% | 1,038,000 |
| 3 | Moncler | 1,100,000 | 42.31% | 1.5 | 90% | 4,800,000 |
| 4 | Stone Island | 1,000,000 | 43.24% | 2.5 | 56% | 1,700,000 |
| 5 | Castore | 81,000 | 185.71% | 4.4 | 75% | 143,000 |
| 6 | Alo Yoga | 279,000 | 33.33% | 2 | 81% | 2,900,000 |
| 7 | Outdoor Voices | 153,000 | 74.07% | 3.6 | 32% | 498,000 |
| 8 | The Girlfriend Collective | 140,000 | 69.81% | 2 | 75% | 537,000 |
| 9 | Summersalt | 75,000 | 29.27% | 2.6 | 95% | 320,000 |
| 10 | Everlane | 458,000 | 8.89% | 2.1 | 70% | 1,053,000 |
Although only a few years old, Manchester-based sportswear brand Adanola holds the title of the most-liked luxury sportswear brand online. The brand has garnered a great deal of positive press and the attention of celebrities and influencers that are no doubt boosting their positive social media presence. Their search presence growth and high review score are further testaments to their customer satisfaction.
Yearly search change
With this pocket of the activewear industry seeing much more of a dramatic change than the typical old guard of classic sportswear, we’ve included an analysis of year-on-year search change to highlight the brands that are seeing the most considerable and consistent growth.
Our obsession with sportswear
Whether it’s in the gym or on the street, sportswear is absolutely everywhere and the popularity of both traditional and luxury brands makes that very clear. Given the likes of Gucci collaborating with Adidas and Dior creating their own boxing gloves, the relationship between sports and fashion is unlikely to grow apart any time soon.
