A market led by large incumbents, increasingly challenged by expanding players

C&A, H&M, Zeeman, Galeria Inno and Zara form the leading group of fashion destinations in Belgium during the festive season, each capturing around one tenth or more of fashion visits to the key retailers analysed. Together, they define the competitive core of the market.

Yet compared with last year, the relative shifts in visit share reveal growing pressure on several — though not all — of these large incumbents.
C&A (–7.0%), H&M (–3.9%) and Galeria Inno (–3.9%) recorded softer festive performance than in 2024.
Zara (–0.7%) also remained slightly below last year’s level.
Zeeman, by contrast, maintained its position more firmly among the market leaders.

At the same time, several smaller and mid-sized players posted clear growth.
Wibra (+42.5%) recorded the strongest uplift.
Other growing players include Kiabi (+14.3%), A.S. Adventure (+3.9%), Zeeman (+2.7%) and Lola & Liza (+0.6%).

Bel&Bo (–1.7%) remained broadly close to last year’s visit levels, while JBC (–17.6%) recorded the steepest relative decline of the festive season.

Overall, the data shows a market where large incumbents retain scale, but incremental festive footfall is increasingly captured by smaller and mid-sized brands gaining momentum in an intensely competitive Christmas landscape.

Different audiences, different shopping destinations

Accurat’s audience view shows how different household types distribute their fashion visits during the festive period.

Among households with children, C&A captures the largest share of visits, followed by H&M, Zeeman, Zara, Primark and Bel&Bo.
In practical terms: when families go fashion shopping during the Christmas period, these brands are most frequently part of their store mix.

For single-person households, the visit distribution looks different. Here, Galeria Inno, Zara and Primark attract relatively higher shares. By contrast, JBC and Bel&Bo capture lower shares in this segment, reflecting their stronger focus on family-oriented shopping behaviour.

Rather than one audience group dominating the season, the festive period shows a segmented visit landscape, where each household type follows its own preferred set of retailers. For brands, this underlines the importance of understanding which audiences they win — and which they leave to competitors during peak trading weeks.

Audience selectivity: how strongly brands over-index on family shoppers

Accurat’s audience selectivity index examines the composition of each brand’s visitor base. It indicates how strongly a brand over- or under-indexes on a given audience segment compared with the fashion market average. In this analysis, the focus is on households with children, showing each brand’s relative strength within this segment.

In simple terms: if the typical fashion retailer sees a baseline share of visits coming from households with children, the index reveals which brands over-index on this audience — meaning a larger proportion of their visitors are families — and which brands attract a more mixed customer base.

JBC, Bel&Bo and Lola & Liza display the highest selectivity indices. This indicates that a larger share of their visits comes from households with children than is typical in the fashion market — confirming their strong positioning within family shopping behaviour during the festive season.

The result for Lola & Liza is particularly striking. As a women’s fashion retailer, the brand does not offer children’s wear, yet it over-indexes on households with children — suggesting that mothers remain a key driver of its festive-period traffic.

By contrast, broader-format retailers such as C&A and Primark show indices closer to the market benchmark, reflecting a more evenly balanced visitor mix across household types.