Women in France spent more money on underwear in 2002 than in the year before. The French market for ladies’ underwear increased by 3.5 percent, peaking at  2.5bn in 2002. This constitutes a 1.6 per cent rise on a constant-currency basis. The lion’s share  a little over  2bn  was spent on lingerie. Sleepwear appears to have been less significant with sales of only  456m.

These findings are the results of a survey conducted by French market research institute IFM-CTCOE. According to this survey, women spent an average of  100.2 on underwear in 2002, with younger women between the ages of 15 and 24 who spent  148.50 or about three times as much as women over the age of 64, who spent  50.

Ladies’ underwear was chiefly purchased through vertical sales channels and in supermarkets, which accounted for 26 per cent each, while the volumes being sold by mail-order accounted for 16 per cent, at small independent retailers for 14 per cent and in department stores for 9 per cent. Ten years ago, small independent retailers still constituted the leading sales channel for underwear in France.

Paris-based IFM CTCOE remarked that there is an interesting trend towards increasing speed within the sales channel due to the heightened popularity of fashion products that serve to draw young customers in particular into stores again and again.