Bold Moves and Major Deals Shaping Industry

Fewer, bigger and bolder. 

That was the bumper sticker for mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. consumer space last year. But will that trend hold this year?

Maybe. 

The forces that shaped dealmaking in 2025 are still in play, according to experts.

Private equity players might be shy when it comes to apparel, but they have oodles of money to spend and a job to do. Portfolio companies could continue to look at which properties should stay and which need to go. And the brand management biggies are all looking to get bigger still. 

But the deal market also faces a lot of uncertainty, much like the rest of the business world.

If fashion’s biggest names keep buying, it will be because of — or in spite of — the stop-and-start chaos of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, consumer worries about affordability, the midterm elections in the U.S. and much more.

In 2025, some dealmakers were ready to take the risk. 

KPMG’s final tally found a total of 2,559 deals in the consumer sector last year — and while that’s a 6.9 percent drop in volume, total deal value skyrocketed 51.7 percent to $230 billion.

Leading the way were Kimberly-Clark Corp.’s $48.7 billion deal to buy Neutrogena-owner Kenvue Inc. and Sycamore Partner’s $23.7 billion buyout of Walgreens Boots Alliance. On a slightly smaller scale, but still very big for the consumer sector, 3G Capital took Skechers private for $9.4 billion.

David Shiffman, head of investment banking and co-head of the consumer retail group at Solomon Partners, described the market overall as “fairly robust” last year with action on several fronts, including: 

“The M&A market takes its cues from confidence that’s generated in two different places. Confidence in the market. You have a robust equity market and robust credit markets. That facilitates a robust M&A market. The other major factor is confidence in the boardroom or by owners or management teams,” Shiffman said.

If management teams are feeling confident — if not in their market, than their own abilities — they might have some reason.

“Retail leaders are truly battle tested at this point,” said Jeff Derman, Shiffman’s co-head in Solomon’s consumer retail group. “What they have gone through, if they’ve been around back to the Great Recession, all the existential threats that they’ve faced, and then, on a compressed level from 2020 and beyond with shutdowns to supply chain [troubles], regional banks to you name it. 

“They have learned to expect the unexpected and need to find ways to navigate through it,” Derman said. “You need to take advantage of opportunity when it presents itself. Sometimes you have to create that opportunity in moments when the backdrop is uncomfortable or unpredictable and the battle tested retail leaders acted last year.”

But there are some companies that — no matter how tested their chief executive officer is — will struggle to connect with potential buyers.

Michael Kollender, co-head of investment banking at Stifel, said, “There’s really no — or very limited — PE bid for apparel-related businesses.” 

And brands without their own connection to the customer are out of fashion for the finance types. 

“It’s very difficult to sell an apparel brand that’s distributed primarily through department stores,” Kollender said.

However, he said there was still potential for “interesting transactions in the footwear space,” as well as for “selective lifestyle brands that are high-growth, digitally connected with the consumer and have multiple distribution points.”

But it’s the brand management companies that will continue to be “the acquirer of choice across apparel, accessories and footwear.” 

That puts Authentic, WHP Global, Marquee Brands, Bluestar and the rest in the spotlight and set to, as Kollender put it, “continue to see acquisition flow.”

“The brand management space is very different than it was,” he said. “A decade ago, it was purely about acquiring older brands and taking them to lower-end distribution channels and exploiting them. To continue to grow, they had to do acquisitions of additional brands. Today’s strategy is a complement of growing the acquired brands organically through new and expanded categories, geographies and distribution channels along with acquiring additional brands and IP.”

Looking into her crystal ball, Julia Wilson, principal of advisory strategy at KPMG, said the consumer deal market would probably see “a little bit more of the same” as last year.

“Maybe instead of only seeing the blockbusters, these great brands coming to market, you might see people making some more hard decisions around other ones,” Wilson said.

That is, in part, because business is hard.

“The themes of portfolio rationalization, focus on the core, generating cash — the M&A market and what we’re seeing is a reflection of that,” she said. 

Tariff uncertainty remains, especially after Trump imposed a blanket 15 percent levy on the world this week, but companies and dealmakers are also just “moving forward with our lives,” Wilson said. 

“We’re just used to big mega events happening more frequently for us. So that should continue to make the deal market wheels churn, but the mathematics of it churning, just in terms of leverage models, that’s still a bit of a headwind,” she said, since interest rates are not set to fall as much as some thought they might. 

When the wheels of the deal market churn, fashion changes — whether it’s the next big buyout by brand management or the next big sale as another one-time consolidator looks to focus on its core.

The Bottom Line is a business analysis column written by Evan Clark, deputy managing editor, who has covered the fashion industry since 2000.