How many second hand wedding dresses are sold in the UK each year?

• UK population (= 60 Mio)
• # of women (~50% = 30 Mio)
• those in the marriable age (age group 20-60, i.e. 50% of all women if 80 y.o. is assumed as life expectancy = 15 mio)
• Out of those women % getting married while being in the age group (maybe also 50% = 7.5 Mio)

1. Out of those % getting divorced (50% = 3.75 Mio)
2. Out of those who are not getting divorced % who sell their wedding dress (10% = 0.75 Mio)

Total women selling their wedding dresses over their lifetime = 4.5 Mio

Divided by the number of "marrigeable years" we assumed: 4.5 Mio / 40 years = 112.5 k second-hand dresses per year

Hi

Here is an approach that accounts for annual sales of wedding dresses : 

1. Population of UK - 60M, and life expectancy is 80 yrs old and women are 50% (30M)

2. Assume women get married between 20 and 40 for simplicity =  25% of all women = 7.5M Women

3. Further assume 67% of women get married at all - or roughly 5M will get married

4. Next you have to estimate what % of these get married every year. A simplifying assumption you can make is that there is an equal probability of getting married every year. Which means there is a (1/20) or 5% chance of getting married in one year

5. Therefore 5% of 5M or 250,000 women get married every year in the UK.

6. Now you need to assume how many wear new vs used dresses. It is safe to assume most will buy a new dress but you can argue that due to (i) high costs, (ii) changing trends favoring second hand clothing and (iii) market for vintage dresses there is still a market for second hand dresses. Assume it is currently about ~10% of all wedding dresses sold

7. Therefore 25,000 second hand wedding dresses are sold each year in the UK

Lastly - you can always add a multiplication factor to account for  - second marrigages, women getting married younger than 20 and older than 40

Hope this helps

Udayan

Hello!

Classical market sizing question. Here are my toughts: 

1. Calculate number of women in the UK > population (asked) / 2
2. Caculate average weddings per woman in her lifetime > considering some people never marry, and some do more than once. 
3. From then on, logic is indeed very similar to the "classic" babies question, but taking into consideration only half of the population> https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/brain-teaser-babies-born-per-year-month-day-5614#first-answer

Hope it helps!

Cheers, 

Clara

Hi,

Mathematically you don't even need the marriageable age:

• Population
• Subtract the % that never get married
• Divide by 2 to get the couple
• Divide by life expectancy to get the # of marriages per year
• Assume % getting married for the 2nd and 3rd time
• Assume % using 2nd hand dresses

Best

To summarize a bit, there's a few angles from which to attack this and they're all right. They're also all top down...

Demand side vs Supply side: I.e. How many women want 2nd hand dresses each year versus how many want to sell 2nd hand

^Think about this one and what actually make a bit more sense for accuracy/thoroughness purposes...think in terms of economics.

Annual vs. Liftetime: I.e. How many are likely buying (getting married) or selling (divorcing) in a year versus in each person's lifetime what is the average # of times, then divide this by the years alive

For any of these calcualtions, you're doing this on a subset of the British population (i.e. women of a certain age range)

I would start from the population and the average marriage per person.

Best,
Antonello

Hi,

I would suggest that you should present your own approach and I would be happy to review. 

Meanwhile please see below my approach to segmentation in market sizing as well as examples of solved cases:

B2C:
-Demographics (Age, education, income, family size, race, gender, occupation, nationality)
-Behavioral (Purchasing behavior, customer journey stage, occasion & timing,
customer loyalty & interest, risk tolerance, user status) 
-Psychographic (Lifestyle, personality traits, values, opinions, interests of consumers) 
-Geographic (Geographical boundaries)

B2B:
-Company characteristics (Industry, company size, number of employees)
-Geography (Geographical boundaries)
-Purchasing Approach (Occasion & timing, customer capabilities, nature of existing relationship) 
-Personal Characteristics (Loyalty, risk attitude, user status)

B2G:
-Demographics  (Type of agency, size of budget, the amount of autonomy) 
-Geographic (Geographical boundaries) 
-Government Tier (Federal , State, Local, Quasi-governmental, International)
-Bid type (Closed, Open)

But sometimes you don’t need to segmentation. Here is an example of case that could be solved with high level top down approach - estimate the size of credit card market in the US:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/how-should-i-approach-the-following-question-estimate-the-market-size-of-credit-cards-in-the-us-6695