Europe’s largest clothing retailer, Spain’s Inditex, is taking its flagship Zara brand online, but it can expect stiff competition from other giants of high street fashion already well-established in cyberspace.
Zara’s virtual boutique will be available on Thursday in selected European markets: Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and Britain. From next year, it will be expanded to the US, Japan and South Korea.
However, it will enter an already crowded sector, where its main rivals in low-cost fashion have been operating for years. US retailer Gap, which has been online in the US since 1997, expanded the service to 55 countries on Aug. 16.
Sweden’s H&M, Europe’s second-largest clothing retailer, has been selling online since 1998 in seven countries, including Germany, and plans to move into another major market, Britain, on Sept. 16.
Zara’s late entry to the market may be a surprise, but it may also have anticipated a boom in cyberspace clothes shopping.
Clothing sales represented just 2.5 percent of online commerce in Spain last year, and 5.6 percent in France, according to industry experts in these countries.
Another high-street brand, Mango, has been online since last year, but receives only about 1 percent of its revenues in this way. Gap has performed better, pulling in US$1.1 billion in online sales last year, or 7.7 percent of its total.
But a recent poll by the Nielsen institute in 55 countries showed that clothes are now the second most popular products online, after airline tickets, but before books.
Mango’s aim of multiplying its online sales seven-fold in three years is one indication that the market may be about to take off.
Zara’s arrival “is eagerly awaited, as we are in the middle of boom in Internet clothing sales,” said Nathalie Gennerat, a consultant at the French Fashion Institute.
She pointed to Britain, where almost 10 percent of clothing is purchased online.
Previously people were reluctant to buy clothes online because it is impossible to try them on first.
“There was also the question of shipping costs” and the problem of returns, said Jacqueline Anderson, an analyst with Forrester Research.
But companies now pay closer attention to some of these concerns, offering to pay a certain amount of the shipping charges or making exchanges easier, she said.
Zara said it wants to “reproduce the buying experience of its boutiques on the Internet,” with 100 percent of its products available at the same price of its high street stores, and extend its Web site to the 77 countries where it is already present.
It has already prepared the ground. Its Facebook page, launched last year, now has 4.4 million fans. Its iPhone application has been downloaded some two million times.
Inditex, which owns seven other brands including Massimo Dutti and Bershka, sees the move as a “major strategic step” which will boost sales rather than eating into the earnings of the shops themselves.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique