Ranking: The 10 fastest-growing retail brands in the UK

Fashion dominates the list of fastest-growing retailers last year, with the top two players illustrating the divergence happening in the sector. Second-hand reselling app Vinted tops the list with an incredible 171% uplift in transactional spend in 2023 versus 2022, while fast-fashion giant Shein pulls in 84% growth. 

Because Vinted isn’t a retailer in the traditional sense and this ranking uses transaction data, much of this growing spend will be going to the sellers on the platform, but the buyer protection fee it charges for each sale will grow along with it. 

To keep shoppers interested, Vinted constantly makes tweaks that offer a more personalised experience and encourage spending. It recently added an outfit-building tool that suggests items that would complement shoppers’ previous purchases. To get people selling – and get around the fact that it doesn’t offer standardised returns – when a purchase is marked as delivered it now gives shoppers the option to relist if their buy isn’t suitable. 

But as popular as the green fashion options are, Shein is still charging through the UK’s fashion sector with impressive growth. Shein’s profits reached $2bn (£1.6bn) in 2023 and gross merchandise value came in at $45bn (£36bn) – which is more than net profits at H&M and Primark. 

According to the analysts at Retail Navigator by Lumina, Shein is expected to reach £2.5bn by 2027/28, making it one of the UK’s top 30 biggest retailers. 

The fastest-growing list contains a mix of different retailers, approaching customers from a range of demographics, but CACI associate partner Chris Lidington says there are some common threads between them. 

“You choose to shop with a retailer for one of three reasons: convenience, experience, price – or a combination of them,” he says. 

”When we look at these retailers, Vinted is offering convenience. It’s got great ease-of-use and fulfilment versus its competition so it meets that customer need. With Shein, you have to wait longer but it’s winning on price.” 

Top 10 fastest-growing retailers

CACI brand dimensions, transactional spend year-on-year percentage increase

You might have expected the top two brands, but the retailer receiving the bronze medal will almost certainly come as a surprise. One of Britain’s oldest luggage brands, Antler, has clocked up incredible growth over the last year. Thanks to a rebound in global travel and a brand overhaul, spending at the retailer is up 71% year on year. 

“It’s been an incredible couple of years for the brand,” says Antler managing director Kirsty Glenne. 

“We’ve achieved two consecutive years of double-digit sales growth, moving from £5m to £40m in just two years, while maintaining profitability. This growth is a result of an aggressive brand transformation strategy with significant investment in brand, people and product – all aligned towards the singular goal of reimagining and elevating the Antler brand.”

The retailer has also made sure to premiumise its image in recent years and has been more selective with third-party stockists, which Glenne says has gone down well with customers. 

“We’ve taken deliberate steps to move away from this [discount-led] approach. We’ve been proactive in avoiding discounting in order to achieve our elevated brand positioning. This strategy runs alongside the introduction of premium brand partnerships to help strengthen Antler’s rebrand positioning such as Soho House and the British Fashion Council.

“Distribution-wise, while we very much believe in a multichannel approach, we are not about just putting product on shelves and shifting volume. It’s critical to our value proposition that we work only with a curated network of wholesale partners.” 

The power of the brand

Antler is one of a few brands on the list that has made a success of running limited distribution outside of their own channels. Other examples include Gymshark and Lululemon. 

“If we look back a few years ago when we had a lot of department stores, these brands had lots of exposure to customers who could look at and feel their products,” says Lidington.

“As the space became more competitive, there was a greater need to build brand equity and share a story with customers. Retailers are increasingly looking at physical retail to do that.

“The brands that are expanding their physical store presence with single-brand, like Gymshark, are starting to realise the role that direct-to-consumer retail plays and how it impacts their whole customer marketplace and their customer ecosystem. It’s not purely a transactional point of sale; it’s all about putting the brand in the path of the consumer.”

Top 10 fastest-growing household retailers

CACI brand dimensions, transactional spend year-on-year percentage increase

The retailers in the household sector had a more subdued year in terms of spend, as many consumers with tight budgets cut back on making updates in their homes – especially those who made improvements during lockdowns. 

Muji’s 14% uplift in the UK wasn’t enough to save it from financial jeopardy in Europe, as the Japanese home and lifestyle retailer called in administrators for its European division at the end of March.

“Household as a sector hasn’t seen the same level of growth as other sectors,” says Lidington. 

“Whilst Muji is top, and it’s well documented that they’ve called in administrators, they grew 14% year on year but with inflation that’s more like 4%.”

Both Pets at Home and Pets Corner benefited from increased pet ownership during the pandemic, while premium retailers The White Company and Le Creuset also grew sales. 

The list is void of most of the specialist big-ticket retailers you might have expected to see in prior years, with Tapi the only one in the top 10.

The carpet specialist told Retail Week its performance was aided by investing in more broadcast advertising to bring its proposition to a bigger audience and boost awareness of its 4.8/5 TrustPilot score.

Top 10 fastest-growing health and wellbeing retailers

CACI brand dimensions, transactional spend year-on-year percentage increase

Beauty and health had a better year than homeware, with the lipstick effect – the concept that people are more willing to spend on affordable luxuries as a treat during times of financial difficulty – putting a bit of colour on the sector’s cheeks. 

Both the top two, Rituals and Sephora, embarked on physical store expansion in the UK last year, which has improved their performances. 

Although not quite to the same extent, value players such as Savers and Bodycare also rode the wave, lifting their sales by 12% and 8% respectively. 

Top 10 fastest-growing grocery retailers

CACI brand dimensions, transactional spend year-on-year percentage increase

Thanks to soaring inflation, grocery retailers also saw a boost in their performance last year. 

Shoppers looking to get more for their money helped to fuel growth at Aldi and Lidl, with the former seeing a 16% uplift and the latter inching ahead with 17% – but Retail Week data and insights director Lisa Byfield-Green says this growth may begin to taper off. 

“Growth for the discounters has already slowed since their cost-of-living peak and while they’ll continue to grow, we can expect this rate to slow down quite a bit over the next few years,” she says.

“It makes sense that if inflation eases and we have more wealth, we’re going to revert to shopping with some of the mainstream and premium grocery retailers. That could mean good news for the likes of Ocado and Waitrose.”

Value variety discounter Home Bargains also put in a solid performance this year. According to CACI Acorn demographic data, the discounter not only pulls in shoppers who fit into the six consumer profiles positioned in the lower-income segment but it has also performed well with more comfortably-off groups such as traditional homeowners, who managed their finances carefully last year. 

Top of the table is frozen ready-meal specialist Cook with 29% growth, benefiting immensely from consumers who wanted to cut takeaways and meals out but who still wanted something special for dinner, which will have aided Marks & Spencer, too.