Piper Jaffray: Teens prefer Supreme over Nike and want food more than fashion

By

Obi Anyanwu

Published
Oct 12, 2017

Are teens over fashion? According to Piper Jaffray, adolescents in the US don’t care much for fashion and prefer spending their money on food.
 

The investment bank released on Wednesday its 34th semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens research survey that found that teens are spending slightly more on food (22%) than they are on clothing (20%).
 
The spring 2017 report that launched in April 2017 reported similar shopping habits. Twenty-four percent of teens spent most of their money on food, while 19% of teens spend mainly on clothing.

The fall 2017 report found that overall teen spending fell 4.4% year-over-year, while parent contribution to teen spend is 67%.
 
The teens that are shopping for clothing have a keen interest in streetwear labels like Vans and Supreme and are not as interested in major brands like Nike, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Fossil, Steve Madden and Ugg. The six major brands saw the largest decline among major brands.
 
“For the first time in years, we’ve seen Nike share moderate as a preferred brand,” said Erinn Murphy, Piper Jaffray senior research analyst. “Offsetting this weakness, we’ve seen an unexpected rise in trends like streetwear with Vans and Supreme gaining momentum. In addition, other brands such as adidas, Puma and New Balance has been capturing more mindshare as teens gravitate towards that 1990s retro look.”
 
Teens’ disinterest in Nike is understandable when considering that Adidas jumped over Jordan Brand as the number two most popular athletic footwear brand in the US. Jordan Brand’s market share was flat over the year and Nike’s market share declined 2% from the prior year.
 
In addition to shopping habits, the survey found that 23% of teens prefer to shop at specialty retailers, which is down 3% year-over-year, and pure play e-commerce shopping increased 2% year-over-year to 17%. Also, Snapchat is the preferred social media platform for 47% of teens and Amazon is the preferred website (49%).