Following the rise in oil and gas prices after the conflict involving Iran, German consumers are under renewed cost pressure. Earlier this year, Accurat already measured a first shift towards discounters in grocery retail. The back-to-school season now shows a similar pattern in fashion.
Accurat analysed store visits to 14 mainstream and value fashion retailers selling children’s clothing across Germany in August and September 2026, compared with the same period in 2025. The data shows that KiK, Ernsting’s family, Takko Fashion and NKD strengthened their position, while C&A, H&M, Mango and Zara lost visit share.
Value fashion gains as mainstream chains lose ground
The four neighbourhood value chains in the analysis (KiK, Ernsting’s family, Takko Fashion and NKD) together captured around six in ten back-to-school visits. Each of them grew its share compared with 2025, and as a group they gained close to two percentage points.
KiK remains the largest retailer by visits and grew further, even while the company is in the middle of a programme to close around 135 stores in Germany in 2026. Ernsting’s family recorded the strongest overall improvement and moved closer to KiK.
At the same time, the mainstream fashion chains lost ground. C&A and H&M, still the third and fifth largest retailers by visits, both declined, as did Mango, Zara and Tom Tailor. TK Maxx edged up slightly and UNIQLO remained stable.
Primark is the notable exception. Although it is one of the lowest-priced retailers in the market, it did not benefit from the shift and held its share flat. Unlike the other value chains, Primark operates large destination stores in city centres. Price alone therefore does not explain the winners: families chose value close to home.
Growth is driven by more shoppers, not more trips
To understand these shifts, Accurat separates share of visits into its two drivers: reach (the fraction of unique shoppers who visited a retailer at least once) and frequency (how often those shoppers returned). The actionability matrix plots both.
Frequency barely moved for most retailers. The real story is in reach. KiK, Takko Fashion, NKD and TK Maxx all attracted a larger share of back-to-school shoppers, while C&A and H&M saw the sharpest declines in reach of all retailers analysed, followed by Mango.
Only Ernsting’s family and s.Oliver improved on both drivers: more shoppers, visiting more often. For Ernsting’s, the combination with its large size makes it the clear winner of the season. Primark, Reserved and Tom Tailor saw frequency slip, with Tom Tailor also losing reach.
In matrix terms, C&A, H&M and Mango face an acquisition problem rather than a loyalty problem: the families who still shop there visit as often as before. The priority is to win back lapsed families, starting with the regions and audiences where reach fell most. For Primark, Reserved and Tom Tailor, where frequency slipped, the focus shifts to retention: assortment, promotions and reasons to come back.
This mirrors what Accurat observed in grocery earlier this year: under budget pressure, shoppers do not necessarily shop more often. Instead, they switch where they shop.
Ernsting’s family: growth comes from where it was weaker
The regional breakdown shows that Ernsting’s growth is not evenly spread. Two patterns stand out.
Berlin, Sachsen and Bayern drive the gains. Berlin is the strongest performer, with both more shoppers and clearly higher visit frequency. Sachsen and Bayern also improved on both drivers. In Bayern, where Ernsting’s has a relatively low share of visits, the chain reached noticeably more shoppers. Hamburg, Niedersachsen and Sachsen-Anhalt added reach as well, although in Niedersachsen those shoppers came less often.
In its strongholds, Ernsting’s is defending rather than growing. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schleswig-Holstein and Thüringen, where more than a quarter of all visits in the segment already go to Ernsting’s, reach declined. In Schleswig-Holstein and Thüringen, the remaining shoppers did visit more often. Hessen is the only larger state where Ernsting’s lost on both drivers.
Each pattern calls for a different action. In Berlin, Sachsen and Bayern, Ernsting’s can scale what is working. In its strongholds, the task is acquisition: understanding which families no longer visit and whether store formats still fit them. In Niedersachsen, the challenge is turning new shoppers into repeat visitors, while Hessen, declining on both drivers, deserves a closer look.
Not only a discount-shopper story
Given the macroeconomic context, Accurat split shoppers into two groups based on their grocery behaviour. Discount shoppers visit ALDI Süd, ALDI Nord, Lidl, Penny or Netto Marken-Discount at least once a week. Non-discount shoppers visit a grocery discounter less than once a week.
One might expect value fashion to grow mainly among families who already shop at discounters. The data shows the opposite. Ernsting’s gained most among non-discount shoppers, who both visited in larger numbers and came back more often. Among discount shoppers, Ernsting’s also reached more people, but frequency remained unchanged.
Ernsting’s now even holds a slightly higher share of visits among non-discount shoppers than among discount shoppers. In other words, value fashion is winning over families that do not typically see themselves as discount shoppers, a group mainstream chains have long been able to count on.
The next lever for Ernsting’s lies with discount shoppers: it already reaches more of them, but they do not yet come back more often. Repeat-visit triggers, such as promotions timed with weekly grocery trips, could close that gap.
Mainstream shoppers already shop value, not the other way around
The combiner analysis shows which retailers share the same shoppers. Here, the overlap is strikingly one-directional.
Around four in ten shoppers of C&A, H&M and Zara also visited KiK or Ernsting’s family during the back-to-school period. KiK and Ernsting’s act as a shared second stop for almost every other retailer in the market.
The reverse is far less common. Only about one in five KiK shoppers also visited H&M, and very few visited Zara. Value shoppers largely stay within the value segment, while mainstream shoppers move freely between both worlds.
For mainstream chains, this is the real risk behind their loss of reach: their customers are already familiar with the value alternative. When budgets tighten, switching does not require a new habit. It only takes a shift in where the bulk of the school wardrobe is bought.
Energy costs squeeze the family budget, not fashion prices
The shift happened against a tense macroeconomic backdrop. German inflation reached 3.3% in September 2026, with energy as the main driver. In August, fuel was more than a quarter more expensive than a year earlier, while clothing and footwear prices rose only marginally. The GfK consumer climate for September remained deeply negative.
In other words, it is not fashion that became more expensive. It is everything around it. Families compensate by spending more carefully on items like school clothing, where cheaper alternatives are close at hand.
The retailers’ own reports point the same way. KiK’s management describes customers as highly price-sensitive and willing to switch. Ernsting’s family reported revenue of around €1.6 billion for its 2025/26 financial year. H&M, by contrast, reported only 1% sales growth in local currencies for June to August, with fewer stores than a year earlier. C&A has also continued to close individual locations in Germany.
Back to school is a stress test for the family budget. This year, families did not stop buying school clothes — they changed where they buy them. The value chains close to home won, and not only among discount shoppers. For mainstream retailers, the challenge is that their customers already know the alternative.
What this means for fashion retail in Germany
Three structural observations stand out:
- Value fashion is winning back to school. KiK, Ernsting’s family, Takko Fashion and NKD gained visit share, while C&A, H&M, Mango and Zara lost ground. Primark, the one value retailer built on city-centre stores, held steady but did not benefit: proximity mattered as much as price.
- The battle is about reach, not loyalty. Shifts are driven by more or fewer families entering a store, not by changes in visit frequency.
- The trade-down reaches beyond discount shoppers. Ernsting’s grew fastest among families who rarely shop at grocery discounters, and mainstream shoppers already combine their visits with value chains. That leaves C&A and H&M exposed if energy costs keep household budgets under pressure.
The analysis shows how quickly macroeconomic pressure translates into measurable shopping behaviour, and how behavioural data can reveal not only who wins, but where and with which shoppers.