StORES Magazine - September 2007 - (Page 47) EXECUTIVE SUITE / E-COMMERCE Fashion Apparel a Growing ‘Click’ Got-to-have-it shoppers willing to trade expedience for ambience BY FRED MINNICK orget the fitting room. Consumers are trying on Giorgio Armani and Prada while seated at their computers. The fashion e-commerce sector is booming, according to research firm Forrester. Its recently published “State of Online Retailing” indicates that online fashion sales are expected to reach $22.1 billion this year, an increase of nearly 21 percent from 2006, and apparel, accessories and footwear trails only travel in terms of total online sales. F “Traditionally, we’ve comped the first quarter at 40-plus percent,” says Edward P. Foy Jr., CEO of eFashionSolutions. “We just don’t believe [this level of growth] is going to keep happening, but it has for the last six years.” eFashionSolutions is a full-service e-commerce fashion company whose clients include DKNY, Rafé, Oscar de le Renta, Leiber, JLO, Phat Farm and Baby Phat. While using its clients’ URLs, eFashionSolutions is essentially a one-stop shop for online retailing: It stores clients’ merchandise in a warehouse, digitally photographs models wearing the apparel, mans a call center and executes live chats and e-mail. It also offers clients full customer service care, including returns management, payment processing and logistics. Foy, featured by Entrepreneur Magazine in its 2004 “Young Millionaires” issue, says running a profitable fashion site “boils down to getting things live very quickly, making sure that it’s prioritized based on what’s selling and prioritizing your workflow to get the hot items constantly feeding on the site.” Premium clothing designers have begun offering their apparel online, in some cases skipping traditional stores altogether and marketing directly to the consumer. “The designer customer seems to be perfectly happy to shop online, which is a little surprising because of the price points and the difficulty of fit sometimes with designers,” says Dianne Starnes, a retail and fashion consultant who helped create the online clothing portal MyShape.com. Foy says luxury consumers were a little slower to embrace online shopping because they are accustomed to the ambience of their favorite high-end stores. Now that they have come around, he says, it has become the fastest-growing segment for on2007 online fashion line clothing sales. Now, “the challenge is sales forecast: there’s not a lot of selection on these luxury sites.” $22.1 billion But niche items are precisely what online luxury customers – primarily 25- to 45year-old women – are looking for. Just don’t expect this shopper to come back if you don’t give her a positive experience. “The investment you put into customer service, digital photography and production … pays off because she comes back if she has a great experience,” Foy says. up 21% WWW.STORES.ORG STORES / SEPTEMBER 2007 47 http://MyShape.com http://WWW.STORES.ORG
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