Organic Cotton - still growing market niches

Global retail sales of organic cotton apparel and home textile products reached an estimated $3.2 billion in 2008, according to the Organic Cotton Market Report 2007-2008. This represents a 63% increase from the $1.9 billion market in 2007. Despite the global retail outlook an estimated $4 billion market in 2009 and a $5.3 billion market in 2010.

Conventionally-grown cotton uses 10 percent of the world's pesticides and 25 percent of insecticides but it only occupies 3 percent of arable land. And those pesticides and herbicides pollute our water and our air. According to the USDA, in one year alone over 50 million pounds of pesticides were used on U.S. cotton fields.

Organic farming is better than other farming practices as it maintains and restores soil fertility without making use of chemical pesticides. The purchase of organic clothing is getting a philosophical and emotional decision, particularly in a gloomy economic environment. Top 3 reasons to use organic cotton are: reduce allergies to chemicals, stop poisoning the food we eat, protect the eco system.

Outdoor apparel manufacturer Patagonia made a commitment  to switch all of the cotton items they offer to 100% organic cotton;  they recently introduced 100% organic cotton denim jeans and an organic cotton canvas sneaker. H&M is increasing the use of organic cotton in 2009 by 50% against 2008 to 4,500tons.

Our audit of multiple retailers identified 4 groups:

activewear and outerwear: patagonia, quiksilver, timberland.

corporate communication: ann taylor, inditex, primark, zara

organic range + online shop: american apparel, anthropologie, banana republic, french conection, gap,  j. crew, ralph lauren

both communication and organic range: H&M, marc o'polo, new look, topshop, uniqlo, wal mart

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