After food, another key item in the family budget became more expensive. People are no longer having it, while in Germany it is getting cheaper

Traders seem to be taking full advantage of the current wave of price increases and raising their prices as much as possible. Some may do so not enough to offset the increase in costs, which may not have risen so much in their segment, for example, but rather to increase their margins.

Why fashion has become more expensive

This is not exactly the case with foods, which become more expensive, mainly because the costs to producers and traders are actually rising. But it is not just food that is massively burdening household budgets. Quite unexpectedly, clothes also became more expensive. This even exceeds the average level of inflation, and in April its prices rose by almost twenty percent.

Such an increase is unprecedented in this segment. And apparently also unfounded. Indeed, some data point to the fact that the cost of importing fashion has not increased much, and if so, only in low percentage units.

After all, this corresponds to the price development of this segment, for example in Germany. Here, statisticians for April measured an average increase of 3.4%. But be careful. In previous months, fashion has become cheaper here, so these are more statistical fluctuations. Clothing in Germany still costs more or less the same, and some organizations point out that it tends to be cheaper due to various events in which traders try to sell out stock goods that have accumulated in recent years.

Margins jumped significantly

Experts from the Czech National Bank also drew attention to the problem of rising fashion in the Czech Republic. In its analysis, it admitted that input costs in this segment increased by 4.4%. But clothes became more expensive by twenty percent. Traders’ margins clearly increased.

The clothing sector itself does not particularly contradict this, but draws attention to the fact that they have long operated at very low margins, which they have now simply decided to increase in uncertain times. The truth is that few people know where labor, energy or transport prices will go.

Uncertainty raises inflation expectations, and traders are simply trying to prepare for worse times when customers are still shopping. However, these worse times may not eventually occur.

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