It’s the month of love and people are ready to celebrate! Even during a pandemic, 52% of the population plan to celebrate Valentine’s Day – and some feel that it’s even more important during these tough times. However, their celebrations will look different from other years. This year, only 24% of consumers plan to take their loved ones out to dinner, while 41% plan to stay home and celebrate. The National Retail Federation also found that people are planning to spend less on gifts for Valentine’s Day. Those celebrating plan to spend around $164 on a gift, down $32 per person from 2020.
What People are Buying for Valentine’s Day
It’s no surprise that candy, cards, and flowers rank in the top three of gifts being purchased. Clothing also made it on the list accounting for 20% of gifts purchased. With this in mind, we were curious to see what type of clothing people tend to buy in the lead up to February 14th, so we pulled data from Fit Intelligence to analyze the trends.
Based on the trends we saw last year while people were stuck at home, we predicted that comfortable clothes like loungewear and athletic wear would continue to be popular sellers. We also wondered if consumers still wanted to get dressed up for the occasion – even at home – so we checked to see if purchases of dresses, rompers, and skirts increased. We were also curious to see if there would be an uptick in sales with regard to popular Valentine’s Day colors like red, pink, purple, or maroon.
A Look into Comfortwear Data
When we aggregated the data from our 200+ retail partners, we discovered that some of our predictions were correct, while others were not. Even though most people plan to stay home to celebrate Valentine’s Day, we found that the comfort category decreased in purchases for certain items while it increased for others. For instance, flannel and fleece, which were very popular in November, significantly decreased in the new year. Fleece purchases fell by 26% from December 2020 to January 2021 while flannel sales decreased by 24%. On the other hand, leggings and yoga pants continue to be hot sellers. The purchase of leggings increased by 7% from December to January and yoga pants rose by a whopping 94% for the same time period.
We weren’t too surprised to see the huge increase in yoga pants purchases. The beginning of the new year often motivates people to set New Year’s resolutions which typically involve goals that are fitness or health-oriented. That being said, it was a little surprising to see that other comfort categories decreased since the majority of people are still abiding by stay-at-home orders.
Are People Dressing up for Valentine’s Day?
When it comes to Valentine’s Day, we were of the opinion that couples who stay indoors will still make an effort by dressing up for the occasion. That’s why we were curious to see how dresses, rompers, and skirts performed. Our data shows that the purchases of dresses increased by 6% from December 2020 to January 2021. Jumpsuits and rompers spiked by 44% and the sales of skirts increased by 30% over the same period. This leads us to believe that people are still planning to dress up for Valentine’s Day, even if they’re just celebrating at home. This could also point to the fact that people are getting ready for spring and eager to wear something besides their normal stay-at-home attire.
The Colors of Love
Another popular trend around Valentine’s Day is purchasing colors of love – red, pink, purple, or maroon. When we looked at the numbers for these colors, we were surprised to see that the color red decreased in purchases from December to January. However, the other colors all increased. Purchases of pink-colored clothing increased by 15% from December 2020 to January 2021. Meanwhile, purple and maroon hues increased by 19% and 11% respectively over the same time period.
Overall it seems that no matter how people plan to celebrate Valentine’s Day this year, they still want to make an effort with their appearance. We have to believe that after a year of spending so much time at home, people are eager to find an excuse to get dressed up and stray away from their normal comfortable clothes.
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