Fashion wholesale platform JOOR has launched a data-driven list of top independent retailers around the world and it highlights how they’re “playing an increasingly significant role in driving growth across the global fashion sector”. 

Its first JOOR 100: Top Global Retailers list isn’t a ranking so there’s no number one, nor a number 100. But the curated list draws on data from the platform’s expansive global network of over 650,000 buyers and 14,000 brands. Metrics for inclusion in the list include: breadth of brands carried; growth in orders; volume of orders; and activity in establishing new brand connections.

It includes key retailers like Marissa Collections and ESSX in North America, Boon the Shop and Estnation in Asia, and Dover Street Market and Biffi in Europe that are really making an impact on global retail. 

The debut list includes retailers from 26 different countries, with a geographical split of 59% North America, 31% EMEA and 10% APAC.

And importantly, despite the pressure on independents in recent years, JOOR said that its transactional data, has highlighted how the sector has “shown exceptional commercial resilience”.

Over the past five years, the percentage of total wholesale transaction volumes on the platform attributed to independent retailers “has increased significantly”. 

In fact, over the past five years, the percentage of its total GMV that comes from SMB retailers has risen from 47% in January to August 2019, to 49% a year later, 53% the year after that as well as in 2022, then to 56% in 2023 and 59% in the first eight months of 2024.