2022 The Year of Caution & Recovery

After experiencing 18 months from early 2021 through mid-2022 of growth, the fashion industry faced a challenging time again. Persistent inflation and depressed customer sentiments frustrated the growth pace in the year's second half. Inflation remained at the top of the year; it undercut consumer demand, pushing shoppers to curtail fashion spending.

- By: N Bobo Meitei

With the lifting of pandemic-related restrictions around the end of the previous year, 2022 started with an inherited mixture of anxiety, hope and vigour to revive and reclaim the pre-COVID-19 normalcy. When asked what he would do next, a publisher friend, who had been infected twice with COVID and his print publication shut for two years, said, "Publishing is the only thing I know, and this means I have to pull in everything to re-launch the publication at any cost." Such was the state of mind prevalent across businesses and the working force battered by the pandemic.

Similarly, the fashion industry started the year on the same note. Long -shuttered businesses finally opened, dusted and became operational, yet many never returned. Masked customers, who had been shopping online, trickled into stores operated by masked staff. After experiencing 18 months from early 2021 through mid-2022 of growth, it faced a challenging time again. Persistent inflation and depressed customer sentiments frustrated the growth pace in the year's second half. Inflation remained at the top of the year; it undercut consumer demand, pushing shoppers to curtail fashion spending.

Globally, apart from the supply chain disruption that rattled the world's major markets, macroeconomic and political uncertainties deterred businesses from achieving targets. Then the war in Ukraine increased the pressure. This global economic gloom was manifested in consumers' shopping habits, and the fashion industry bore the brunt of poor demand. Cost-conscious customers cut back their spending, and the difference between the shopping habits of low- and high-income households became more pronounced. The latter category being insulated from the impacts of economic slowdowns continued to spend mainly as they had been.