With athleisure still a dominant trend going into fall, teens are unsurprisingly gravitating towards sneakers and performance-based footwear. Nike and Vans come out on top in the latest “Taking Stock with Teens” survey conducted by Piper Jaffray Companies, which highlights spending trends and brand preferences among 9,400 US teens across 46 US states.
Nike dominates the survey with half of all teens selecting the sportswear company as their favorite footwear brand, trailed by Vans (9%), Converse (7%), Sperry (5%) and Steven Madden (3%). Teens also voted Nike as their favorite clothing brand (27%), far ahead of nearest competitors Forever 21 (7%) and American Eagle (6%).
Performance athletic brands like Nike and other comparable brands performed strongly in the survey, as did denim, which is seeing an uptick in popularity for the first time since Fall 2010, and the category is up substantially from last year.
Overall teen spending is down from the spring survey, though spending on fashion is up among upper-income teens. The largest benefactor of spending by upper-income teens are specialty stores, who are replacing broader merchandise/department stores among affluent females by consuming 33 percent of their shopping time – a five percent increase over last year.
“The power of our teen survey goes beyond the information we capture in any given season,” said Neely Tamminga, senior research analyst, in a statement. “Rather, it aids our ability to zoom out and monitor bigger, and sometimes more subtle, but very real trends. For example, we’ve observed fashion choices are moving back to authenticity across denim brands, performance athletic brands and independent cosmetic brands.”