Saudi women spend three times more on clothes than men

The average Saudi woman spends three times more on clothes than her male counterpart, a prominent Saudi fashion designer said on Tuesday.
“A Saudi woman spends nearly SR30,000 annually on clothes while a man spends SR10,000 per annum,” Aishah Al-Otaibi said, adding that this was high expenditure compared to some other countries around the world.
Al-Otaibi, who is the first Saudi woman to design men’s wear, said the Kingdom is the premier market in the Arab region with a potential for faster growth. The Kingdom’s market attracts famous brands from all over the world.
“It is because Saudi women and men have a high fashion sense, they like to look fashionable. The most important factor is that the spending power in the Kingdom is very high,” she said.
“The increasing presence of international designers in the Kingdom is mainly due to the diversity of the Saudi market,” she said, adding that the market has great potential to be a fashion laboratory because there are different tastes among the local populace.
In addition, the Kingdom has different social classes providing an effective platform for designers to showcase different offerings. Moreover, there is greater demand for fashion from the country’s young people, who form a large part of the population.
Al-Otaibi said her organization, Danat Valia, has its office and showroom in Alkhobar in the Eastern Province. “We have plans to come to Riyadh and Jeddah soon. We have an ambitious program to set up showrooms in the region and in other parts of the globe as well,” she said.
“Danat Valia is a Saudi trademark that specializes in the provision of an integrated boutique of products and services. These include designs, stylish productions, jewelry and sweet collections. In addition, we have high-class advertising and digital marketing products,” she said.
“The group comprises several integrated lines including FashionVA for fashion collections and ConVa for engineering and construction. We are the exclusive agents of ECOTECH for pre-engineered buildings while VaSpa is a center for spas and beauty. Then we have AdVa for online and outdoor advertising,” she said.
“We are also the exclusive distributor for Media Glass in the Kingdom, Bahrain and Kuwait. We have VaSweet which produces a comprehensive list of chocolate and confectionary brands and finally JewlyVA for extraordinary jewelry sets, all under the Danat Valia trademark,” she said. She said Danat Valia would organize a media and advertising exhibition in Dammam in March 2014.
She said there is aggressive competition from Chinese firms that have taken up 40 percent market share in the last two years.
“China’s fast-moving, low-cost products have gained in terms of volume of production. But at the same time they rely on imitation, and you cannot guarantee the quality of Chinese products,” she said.

source: arabnews

Tags: Saudi women, women

Share it.