The early, easy wins that international clothing retailers scored when they entered the South African market are becoming harder to score, as local retailers up their game. In the past 10 years, H&M, Zara and Cotton On entered the South African market offering fashion at relatively low prices, putting local retailers, which couldn't keep up with their fast-paced fashion changes, under immense pressure. But Atiyyah Vawda, a retail analyst at Avior Capital Markets, said this week that though it may have taken South African retailers a long time to get on the fast-fashion train, slowly but surely they are getting there. And the market share won by international clothing retailers from local ones may be diminishing, she said. "You can see it from the performance of H&M; sales for stores are negative. Even [its] global performance isn't great. It's not that South African retailers are slow on fast fashion; it's just that the market is so tough," Vawda said. Likewise, Cotton On appears to...
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