American clothing retailers are going through bad times as a number of Department stores such as Macy’s continue to struggle. So much so that specialty apparel stores like J.Crew and Gap are in a scornful mood. All this because shoppers are seen getting close to off-price stores selling goods that are permanently on sale.

A recent (July 14) report by research firm NPD Group found that 75% of US apparel purchases across all retail channels come from shoppers who also shop for clothing at off-price stores such as Marshalls, TJ Maxx and Ross.

Looking at it in another way, if 100 people walk into a Macy’s, 75 of them are also off-price clothing shoppers. That means Macy’s and other US clothing retailers are vying directly for most of their customers with competitors who only sell at a discount.

The NPD report also found that visits to off-price retailers increased 4% in the year through April 2016 compared to the same period last year. During that time, half of those visits led to a purchase.

Many department stores have created their own discount channels to capture these customers though results have been all that satisfactory. While Nordstrom’s offshoot, Nordstrom Rack has performed well, Saks Fifth Avenue’s and Bloomingdale’s outlets have had to go through harder times.

This increase of off-price retailers as well as fast fashion is also the reason of downward pricing pressure that’s making clothes on the low end of retail ever cheaper.

While the data on visits comes from NPD’s Shopper Insights Service, most of NPD’s data comes from its Checkout Tracking Service.

Other Checkout Tracking data not included in the report shows that US consumers of all sorts including buyers of high-end luxury goods are selective on prices and are willing to visit different types of stores in search of deals.