How many clothing and shoe shops are in Saudi Arabia?
Retailers of clothing, footwear and leather goods.
57.3K
active registrations list clothing & shoe shops activities — 4% of classified registrations.
Ministry of Commerce data · Q3 2026 to 16 Sep
57,300 active commercial registrations in Saudi Arabia list clothing & shoe shops activities as of 16 September 2026 — 4% of all classified registrations, the 16th-largest of the 64 sectors we track.
8,858 were registered in 2025 and are still active — -10.3% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Riyadh (16,446), Jeddah (9,691), Makkah (5,573) lead. Relative to its size, Makkah is the most concentrated: clothing and shoe shops make up 2.0× the share they hold nationally.
27% of these registrations are companies rather than sole proprietorships, and the median company reports SAR 100,000 of paid-up capital.
- Active registrations
- 57,300
- 4% of classified CRs
- Registered in 2025
- 8,858
- -10.3% on 2024 · all sectors +15%
- Companies
- 27%
- 15,496 of 57,300
- Median company capital
- SAR 100k
- Paid-up, main registrations
Where clothing and shoe shops are registered
Column height: clothing and shoe shops by city · select a highlighted city for its page
Leading cities
Registrations, with concentration vs the national average
- Riyadh16,4460.9×
- Jeddah9,6911.5×
- Makkah5,5732.0×
- Madinah3,2621.5×
- Dammam2,1350.8×
- Taif1,4391.2×
- Khobar1,3671.1×
- Buraydah9090.6×
- Khamis Mushait8630.9×
- Tabuk8310.9×
Concentration compares the sector's share of a city's registrations with its share nationally; 1.0× is average. Highlighted cities are above 1.15×.
Clothing & shoe shops: registrations by year of creation
Still-active registrations by the year they were created, 2015–2025. Older years read lower because cancelled registrations drop out.
Most common activities
Registrations listing each national activity code
- Retail of bags8,774Activity code 477152
- Retail of men's ready-made clothing7,172Activity code 477111
- Retail of women's ready-made clothing6,945Activity code 477112
- Retail of clothing accessories6,458Activity code 477130
- Retail of footwear6,087Activity code 477140
- Retail of sportswear5,906Activity code 477116
- Retail of women's abayas and furs5,635Activity code 477122
- Retail of children's ready-made clothing5,199Activity code 477113
Business structures
Legal form of registrations in the sector
- Sole proprietorship41,79672.9%
- LLC15,04426.3%
- JSC3450.6%
- SJSC530.1%
- General partnership320.1%
- Limited partnership22<0.1%
- GCC branch7<0.1%
- Foreign branch1<0.1%
Clothing & shoe shops by city
More in retail & trade
Common questions
How many clothing and shoe shops are there in Saudi Arabia?
57,300 active commercial registrations list clothing & shoe shops activities as of 16 September 2026, according to Ministry of Commerce data. A registration can list several activities, so it may also count in related sectors.
Which city has the most clothing and shoe shops?
Riyadh, with 16,446 — 28.7% of the national total. Jeddah follows with 9,691.
Is the number of clothing and shoe shops growing?
8,858 were registered in 2025 and are still active — -10.3% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Can a foreign investor set up in clothing & shoe shops in Saudi Arabia?
Most activities are open to 100% foreign ownership with a MISA investment licence, though some carry conditions such as minimum capital, a Saudi partner or sector-regulator approval. Alpha Consultancy confirms the conditions for your exact activity code before you apply.
Figures are Alpha Consultancy's analysis of the Ministry of Commerce's open datasets on the Saudi Open Data Platform (open.data.gov.sa): the register of active commercial registrations (CRs) as of 16 September 2026.
Active CRsinclude main and branch registrations, as in the Ministry's own totals. Registered in a period counts CRs created in that period that were still active on 16 September 2026; registrations since cancelled are not in the source file, so older periods read lower than the number originally issued.
Partial quarter. The Ministry's Q3 2026 file is labelled as the quarter end but only contains registrations created up to 16 September 2026, so every figure here is as of that date and the latest quarter in the charts (marked *) is incomplete.
Sector figures cover the 1,443,322 active registrations (74.7%) that appear in the Ministry of Commerce's activity association file, which lists activities for registrations created up to 31 December 2025. Registrations created after that date are not yet classified. A registration counts once in each sector it is active in, so sectors overlap.
No individual business is identified on these pages; only aggregate counts are published.
Starting a business in clothing & shoe shops?
We confirm the licence conditions for your exact activity code, then take you from MISA licence to commercial registration and municipal licence.