Sales have fallen with 20% and consumers are buying cheaper things this year. Stores and producers are seeing how their turnover is decreasing with 10% but the market is stretching, because bathing suits from more and more brands are coming to the store shelves.

“This year consumers are calmer in their purchasing habits,” notes Mr. Yoanis Aerakis, president of brand stores, which specialize in bathing suit sales. “During previous summers consumers were buying 2 bathing suits, one more expensive and another cheaper one but this year they are buying only one.”

Not only that people are buying only one bathing suit but there are buying a cheaper model as well… Wholesales, which each year report a turnover of ?100 million, have fallen with 10%-20% this year and stores, which offer older bathing suit models on lower prices, have more clients. “Sales of last year models, which have prices with 50% lower, are getting up,” notes Mr. Aerakis.

Dimitris Arvanitakis, representative of Blue Point in Greece shares that except for everything else, the consumer’s interest is changing and people prefer to spend their money for other things like cell phones, for example. Also, new toys are entering the market and the distribution channels are constantly changing. “Up until few years ago supermarkets were not selling bathing suits, nor were the street markets,” says Mr. Arvanitakis – “right now, whole ships with cheap bathing suits are arriving.”

According to Marco Carlotti, president of Calin, which owns the Calzedonia stores, companies in the field of bathing suits sales and production are attacked by the integration of new toys in the market, mostly by big chain stores for clothes like Zara and H&M, which had started to sell bathing suits. Even though Calzedonia is reporting a sale increase of 15%, as Mr. Carlotti claims, “the rhythm of increase is lower in comparison to previous years.”

When it comes to sales, which are between 30% and 50%, dealers believe that this has not given a push to the market – let us not forget that the biggest sales are recorded to be during June and July. The forecasts are that during the upcoming years, bathing suit sales will be weak and even though fashion dictates the new trends, thanks to the economic crisis the market will not undergo any development.