http://www.myfatpocket.com/fashion/the-evolution-of-the-world-of-shopping.html
The Evolution of the Shopping World
by Min Yan
Remember the good old days of the 90s when shopping was so one-dimensional and straightforward. If you wanted something from the shops, your only option was basically to physically go to the shops and get it yourself.
And then there came the wonderful invention called the Internet. As the Internet proliferation grew to consume almost every aspect of our lives, it was only a matter a time that shopping became part of our online lives.
The massive popularity of online shopping didn't occur overnight, nor did it happen yesterday. At the start, those who shopped online were mainly young men with a high level of income and education and bought primarily books and electronics. However, as the percentage of female internet users increased, the equilibrium began to shift.
In 2000, a study revealed that sixty percent of Internet users report shopping online for clothes, and among these shoppers, 41 percent shopped online at least once a month and 56 percent have made at least one online clothing purchase. Keeping in mind that this was almost a decade ago where people still actually led lives outside of the Internet, these were pretty impressive statistics!
And with statistics such as these, it was only natural that enterprising businessmen began to capitalize on the rapidly changing shopping business model.
Two of the most successful online-only retailers ASOS and NET-A-PORTER were established in 2000, strangely enough, at the end of the Internet boom of the late 90s. Despite the loss of confidence in many Internet startups, who tried to do too many things with too little resources, among consumers, with careful positioning and marketing, they were able to pull through the tough times.
Today, ASOS has over 1,000 employees and is the United Kingdom's largest independent online and fashion beauty online retailer. With international growth leading the way, it is quickly becoming the market leader in the online fashion world, recently posting sales of £223 million.
NET-A-PORTER on the other hand, is an online, London, United Kingdom-based luxury clothing and accessories retailer. The website, presented in the style of a fashion magazine, was launched in 2000 and now stocks over 300 international brands such as Jimmy Choo, Christian Louboutin, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Chloé and Miu Miu. What Net founder and chairman Natalie Massenet has done is combine on one website the thrill of shopping at a chic boutique with the pleasure of reading a fashion magazine.
Successful online retailers such as these opened up a whole new playing field for fashion retailers. Fashion retailers like Forever 21 saw the potential for a whole new market and quickly set up their online presence, which today rakes in a significant portion of the company's annual income. Topshop and Victoria's Secret are among the few other retailers who have significant online presence in addition to its offline entities.
To put things into perspective: Net-a-Porter was sold to luxury conglomerate Richemont in a deal that valued the company at approximately $531 million, while H&M’s market cap is $21 billion. So while e-commerce is definitely not here to replace physical stores, a significant online presence could do a whole lot of good for fashion retailers who are not yet onboard with the idea of e-commerce.
Fact is, it was simply inexcusable for a global fashion retailer to not have an e-commerce operation in this Internet era. Offline retail operations, though massive, were slow and cumbersome, which in the rapidly changing fashion industry, is a huge problem. For example, product testing could take up to weeks for test and response time, as opposed to days with an online retail shop. More importantly, not having an online presence meant that the retailer could be missing out on shoppers who may not be located near to a physical store.
A New Competition
These days, it seems that it's become more and more imperative that fashion retailers have a strong e-commerce presence. Enter the blogshops.
Set up by enterprising young people, these blogshops are a threat to fashion retailers mainly because they are usually targeted towards students or working adults who spend majority of their time online, and at the same time, budget conscious.
However, the biggest threat that these blogshops pose to fashion retailers is simply the fact that they take away what could have been allocated time at their physical stores by shoppers. With these online blogshops, which not only offer fashion forward items at a fraction of the cost of clothes at these fashion retailers, they also offer the gift of convenience, and with these convenience, many shoppers no longer see the need to venture out shopping.
With a lack of a significant online presence, how are the fashion retailers supposed to even attract those who have taken their shopping wholly online?
Once again, the face of shopping has been changed. Where do we go from here?
Sure this is just a comic poking fun at the increasing reliance that shoppers display on the internet, but one cannot help but wonder, would we ever actually come to this stage? That we become so dependent on the internet to supply us with whatever we need that we completely abandon the traditional concept of shopping? Well, retailers could probably rest easy that Apocalypse Day would most likely not come for them.
As strong a presence as online shopping as made in the realm of shopping today, it's highly unlikely that it'd ever dominate actual shopping at the physical stores. After all, as convenient as online shopping is, shoppers lack the basic ability to try on and feel the clothes they fancy. A lot of guesswork and gauging is involved, and it's not unlikely that they end up with items not up to their expectations when the items finally arrive at their door step. Also, it seems that offline is where the lucrative business exists.
In fact, even blogshop owners themselves seem to echo this sentiment, as many of them make the move towards bringing part of their business offline, whether it is renting out whole shops, or sharing space with other blogshop owners in physical stores.
Of course, that's not to say that fashion retailers can rest easy. Here’s the thing: when the economy was at it’s worst, online retail sales were the one area that either grew or didn’t suffer as much from the downturn. Not having an e-commerce operation at this point is simply unthinkable. In a tough economy where people are online everyday but not going to malls and shopping districts as often (if at all), fashion retailers simply must continue to focus on their Web presence in order to remain relevant into the future.
So while online shopping is unlikely to eclipse its brick and mortar counterparts, there's no doubt that the balance will continue to shift in favour of online shopping, as more and more retailers realise the massive potential of the online business, until it reaches an equilibrium where the shopping landscape truly reflects the shopping behaviour of the consumers.
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