Vietnam gains bigger share of the US market with its apparel imports this Year

Vietnam is turning up to be a bigger part of the U.S. market in 2014 with its total apparel imports in the first nine months picking up a 1.2 percentage point share gain, from 10 percent in 2013 to 11.3% in 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA) data released last week.

In September, U.S. apparel imports from Vietnam totaled a record $914 million, a 22.7% increase over last September, bringing the year-to-date total 15.6% to almost $7 billion.

Vietnam is exporting more expensive garments to the U.S. than in the past, with its cost per SME up by 2.2% so far this year. Key categories for Vietnam are women’s cotton knit tops, women’s and men’s cotton pants, women’s manmade fiber knit tops and dresses, and cotton underwear.

While the total U.S. apparel imports from China, this year so far has suffered the biggest share loss dropping from 37.1% to 36.2%. However, imports from China picked up their pace a bit in September, increasing by 5 percent to $3.49 billion. Units (on an SME basis) increased by 12.4%, however, resulting in a 3.5% decline in average garment cost on an SME basis.

Key product categories from China include women’s cotton knit tops, women’s and men’s cotton pants, women’s manmade fiber knit tops and dresses, manmade fiber hosiery and manmade fiber bras.

Bangladesh is the third largest source of apparel to the U.S. both in term of dollar and unit basis this year edging ahead of Indonesia.

India has gained a small amount of U.S. apparel import share this year so far. The value of total apparel imports for the first nine months of 2014 increased by 2.8% compared to the same period last year, to almost $62 billion. Units on SME basis has increased by 3.1%, driving down the average cost per SME by 0.2%. Key categories include men’s and women’s cotton and manmade fiber knit and woven tops.