How online shopping is changing the face of fashion

Have you ever heard that expression “from runway to reality?” How about “from runway to inbox?” Last fall The Peacock Parade, a Canadian flash sales site founded by Jan Gandhi and Nancy Sahota, partnered with Canadian fashion labels JUMA and Denis Gagnon to offer pieces hot off the LG Fashion Week runway. Similarly, lingerie retailer La Vie en Rose ran a holiday group buying promotion in December through Buytopia.ca. And Gilt Groupe,
the mother of all flash sites, has taken the original flash sales model
and expanded it to full-price offerings of men’s, women’s and
children’s fashion as well as artisanal food and wine and even a
$210,000 vacation villa.

This, it seems, is the future for fashion
online: the exclusives are full-price, and you’ll probably hear about
them on Twitter first.

When she was looking for the next big online thing, Joanna Track (the founder of SweetSpot.ca, who has since sold the company) opted not to go the discount route.

“I
have two thoughts on this,” she explains. “From a business sense, when I
was approached by a friend to get involved in an online retail
business, to compete with Gilt and Beyond the Rack, I said no because
there are so many of them popping up, and I think the market is
saturating.

“Then, there’s me as a consumer — I can’t get excited
around pushing clearance goods. I’m a brand person, and that’s about an
aesthetic, an emotional connection. If I’m looking for the exact
perfect black dress I want, I don’t want to be limited by clearance
goods. I want the perfectly curated dress and a superior customer
service experience.”

Dealuxe,
as Track called her new online retail venture, is now nine months old.
Instead of last season’s leftovers, Dealuxe became one of the first
Canadian-based sites to sell in-season contemporary brands and, since
its launch, now has 15,000 registered account users, six figures a month
in sales and revenues growing 300% from May to November 2011, according
to Track.

The initial challenge was that, unlike Americans, who
have shopped from afar via catalogue for years, Dealuxe first had to
educate and assure Canadian consumers about buying clothing online.
“People called with a lot of questions,” she recalls. The majority of
Dealuxe’s sales come from urban centres at lunch hours and before
bedtime. “And you say to yourself, well they have access to these stores
— Intermix, Holt Renfrew
— but the appeal of an online store is that they are busy,
multi-tasking family and job, and they know what they want.” They have
recently, however, as a result of media exposure, been getting more
orders from small towns across Canada. “That’s exciting for us because
what we offer the other half is accessibility to brands that women have
only read about in magazines, like Jennifer Aniston wearing J Brand.”

It
helps that the product is accompanied by dynamic, magazine-style
editorial content — a guest editor, outfit tips — that changes as
regularly as the assortment, almost daily.

“What women are looking
for is inspirational information,” Track says. “I don’t expect them to
come to my site and shop every single day, but if I can get them to come
to my site every day and engage, then yes, they are more likely to buy,
eventually.”

Track says the site gets about 40,000 unique visitors a month, who stay an average of five minutes.

As the social media world gets more fragmented — Tumblr, Pinterest, Google+ — the method of not only talking about but hearing about what retailers are offering is changing. Livedress,
a Canadian-based social network for fashion types launched in 2009,
released a free iPhone app earlier this week, and enlisted the likes of
popular YouTube personality Teresa Ulrich to select (and more
importantly, broadcast) her picks for an outfit a day. It’s an eclectic
mix with potential, mixing companies such as Cougar and Winners (who pay
for branded fashion videos created by Livedress), while local
boutiques, designers and style civilians can share and participate in a
fashion dialogue of their making, unfettered.

But people who are famous on YouTube are one thing, and real celebrities are another. While Gwyneth Paltrow does her GOOP
project from on high, more approachable boldface names such as Kate
Bosworth and Rachel Bilson are taking their fashion aspirations online.

The two starlets have joined BeachMint,
a social commerce site launched by Diego Berdakin and Josh Berman. They
launched the retailer in Canada and began shipping orders on Boxing Day
(tagline: “Shop Now, eh?”). As of Wednesday, the company raised another
$35-million in funding, on a rumoured $150-million valuation.

Anecdotally,
Berdakin — on the phone from their HQ in an area of Santa Monica they
refer to as Silicon Beach — half-jokes that the top customer service
complaint since BeachMint’s launch was from Canadians who lamented it
wasn’t available in Canada. For his part, Berman says part of the appeal
of celebrity-backed products is aspirational shopping and that
regardless of geography, consumers are very interested in what
celebrities are doing. In this case, they’re creating original product,
often with their stylists, exclusively for BeachMint brands.

“First
of all you get access,” he says. “Not everybody can afford a stylist or
facialist or shoe expert. It’s bringing that aspiration and expertise
to your fingertips, online, having access to the top stylists, so if
Kate Bosworth is wearing a certain thing you can, too. Affordably. If
you shop at Tiffany, it’s the experience; you get the blue box, but we
think there’s status in the experience and the celebrity part.”

One
of the important components of BeachMint’s customer interaction is that
users must complete a personalized profile to help the brand pick the
right product for them. This is done by clicking through a series of
quizzes alongside redcarpet celebrity images and product, while
answering such questions as which celebrity style is most “you.” I took
the quiz and signed up for ShoeMint,
their newly-launched Rachel Bilson and Steve Madden collaboration
brand, and my initial options include three starlet blonds: soignée
Ashley Olsen in a plunging mini-dress, Jessica Simpson in a colourful
retro frock with hair in loose waves and a fresh-faced Kate Bosworth.
It’s more personalized than compulsively checking or Zappos and pretty
competitive on price, about 50 per cent to 80 per cent less than retail.

“I
think it comes down to the authenticity of the influencer,” Berman
says. “We don’t just want to find any influencerslash-celebrity but
someone who is super-dialled-in and super-excited to bring that brand to
market.”

Tiffany Elton of Quartier Mode,
a new Canadian-focused fashion boutique in Montreal that just launched
their online store, doesn’t have 100th of BeachMint’s capital, but she
accomplishes a similar connection to potential customers through the
shop’s blog.

“There’s definitely a price point, but I think it’s
more about experience for a customer,” Elton says. “They want to feel
like part of a community and like the backstory of a designer.” Quartier
Mode’s new Design Chronicles series may be low-tech, but it’s
effective.

“We went into the designers’ studios and took pictures
of them working. You can get inside their head and see what inspires
them,” she explains. “The personal connection to the designer makes it
more special. I find that seeing the actual person adds a lot of value
to the clothing.”

The personal connection to who’s shilling helps,
too. OpenSky, another social shopping site, also relies on trusted
curators across design, food and health categories. Curator Kim France,
for example, leverages her reputation and customer affection as a former
Lucky and Sassy magazine staffer and editor to select product she likes
— and then, as is the OpenSky model, she participates directly in the
tangible sales generated on her products from nearly a million
registered users.

If all this starts to feel like the Avon direct
sales model, well, it is — only your Avon lady is in the pages of Star
every week (or maybe she’s editing them).

In some cases, she’s even got a social conscience. MyMela,
a home decor and fashion site with a social conscience twist (or, as it
was explained to me, “the Etsy of India”) goes a step beyond even that.
MyMela’s sales model integrates Micro Advance Funding (IMAF) such that
visitors to the site can opt into a more direct relationship with the
artisans not only by purchasing their wares but through interest-free
loans (for materials, capital improvements or worker training) that are
repaid within a few months, with interest.

That the interest comes in the form of credits that can only be spent on MyMela is merely the latest savvy sales twist.

In November, New York coat manufacturer AUI (at division of Utex Inc.) launched a plus-size e-commerce collection called Just As You Are that eschews sizing and uses userinput body measurements to help select the best coat or jacket. Similarly Fitiquette
(currently in beta-testing) utilizes a patent-pendingtechnologythat
gives users a 360-degree view of the approximated fit and drape of a
garment based on their input body dimensions. And at the Consumer
Electronics Show earlier this month, Bodymetrics
went a step further and previewed a prototype designed to build a
personalized virtual fit model using 3D body-scanning technology. With
this new online experience (and strong service), once the analytics of
virtual fit get perfected, any hesitation about online shopping may be a
thing of the past. Perhaps bricks-andmortar stores will be, too.

For more information:

Gilt.com The original home for online couture.

Dealuxe.ca The Canadian site, with free shipping and returns.

LiveDress.com A fashion social network.

Beachmint.com Collaborations with Kate Bosworth and an impressive recommendation engine.

QuartierMode.com Montreal-based boutique site.

MyMela.com The “Etsy of India” offers socially conscious handmade goods.

Asuare.com and fitiquette.com Two sites taking virtual fitting rooms to the next level.