Nike, Zara are world’s ‘most valuable’ fashion brands

Nike is the most valuable ‘fashion’ brand globally, easily beating every brand on the planet, according to market value assessments based on Google search volume and social media data.

Research done by British high-end menswear e-tailer ThreadSpy said Nike has a market value of £30.5 billion with a brand score of an almost perfect 9.87. It has over 305 million Instagram brand followers, 4.8 million TikTok followers, and saw average searches in the past year of 367 million+ and beat a host of mass-market and luxury labels.

Inditex’s Zara is in second place behind it — although it’s quite a long way behind in terms of value. Despite a higher number of searches (386.5 million), its brand value is estimated at ‘only’ £11.5 billion. Its Instagram and TikTok followers are much lower than Nike’s too (almost 61 million and 9.1 million, respectively). That said, the search volumes help its brand score to 9.75, which comes close to Nike’s and underlines the star Inditex brand’s global strength.

Position number three on the table is where we get into the luxury arena with LVMH’s Louis Vuitton in bronze medal position. Its brand value is £26.7 billion (higher than Zara’s despite it being lower in the ranking), and its search volume is 118 million. It has over 54 million Instagram followers and 11 million on TikTok with a brand score of 9.67. Vuitton regularly comes out on top in luxury brand rankings and continues to beat all-comers at the upper end of the market.

The rest of the top 10 is comprised of an intriguing mix of sports, fashion fashion and luxury labels with a big weighting towards the latter.

Between Adidas in fourth place (brand value £13.4 billion and brand score of 9.44) and Prada in 10th place (brand value £7.3 billion and brand score of 7.92) are labels that sell at opposite ends of the price scale.

Numbers five to nine are Gucci, H&M, ASOS, Dior and Burberry. With Adidas and Prada added in, it’s an interesting collection, with ASOS and Burberry perhaps surprising inclusions. 

ASOS is known to be struggling at present and is mulling a sale of its Topshop brand to raise cash. Meanwhile Burberry is a big name but still one that’s much smaller than some other global luxury brands. It suggests the arrival of Daniel Lee and the work he and the firm’s CEO Jonathan Akeroyd are doing to boost the business is having a real impact in terms of global brand awareness.

Meanwhile, outside of the top 10, Longchamp was named as the fashion brand with the fastest-rising demand in 2023, with the highest search increase of 40% globally.