On-Line and Upscale : Fashion is no stranger to cyberspace. Now it has a designer edge. The forecast: $1 billion of on-line business by 2000. Shoppers, you may start your modems.
Imagine a mall where there are no lines at the register, no crowded parking lots to navigate and no inattentive salesclerks. Your size is always in stock, and the stores never close.
Oh, and did we mention that the mall is in cyberspace?
The Internet Fashion Mall, which debuted July 7, is the latest in a growing list of on-line apparel services that will, ostensibly, let us buy our wardrobes from the comfort of home. Of course, that’s what they said about home shopping via cable and catalogues. But there does seem to be some truth: Recent statistics show that Americans are spending less time in malls.
Services such as the Fashion Net, the Fashion Page, the Cyber Mall and MCI’s @fashion offer news from the runways of Milan, Paris, Los Angeles and New York plus information and shopping advice from designers, models and magazine editors, and limited opportunities to purchase merchandise.
“Up until now you’ve had a lot of companies selling T-shirts and basically a lot of crap through the computer,” says Ben Narasin, owner of New York-based Boston Prepatory, a men’s shirt company, and the architect behind the Internet Fashion Mall. “We’re the first service dedicated to one thing and one thing only, and that’s better fashion.”
What users can expect to find when they sign onto the Internet Fashion Mall is a directory of information and pictures housed in one-inch squares. Topics include “Designer Library,” “The Editors,” “This Month’s Site Sponsor” and “Armani Runway.” The Mall showcases 27 runway shows, six suit makers and 16 sportswear labels.
Narasin never intended to become the general manager of an electronic shopping mall. Instead, he saw the Internet as a way to get to college-educated, 19-to-39-year-old men with incomes of more than $55,000.
“What you have are 30 million computer users--expected to grow to 60 million by the end of 1996--all of whom are virtual bull’s-eyes for my demographic category: men’s shirts,” he says.
What Narasin and anyone else looking for sophisticated fashion via computer had found in recent years was quite the opposite: a handful of small, independent services offering a directory of on-line apparel resources, dated trend reports, consumer chat lines and electronic catalogues from sources such as JCPenney, Nordstrom and Lands’ End.
While it is not as satisfying as leafing through the glossy pages of an upscale fashion magazine, the Internet Fashion Mall promises to separate itself from the rest of the pack. (New York writer Woody Hochswender likens the electronic shopping experience to a “style Cyberia” in the July Harper’s Bazaar.)
Its plans include more interactive services than previously available, such as shopping opportunities and using the help of fashion advisers to select a wardrobe or gift. Users can browse the latest collections of such big-name designers as Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace and Ralph Lauren, and, with the click of the mouse, find out where to buy the clothes locally.
A site (read: store) in the Mall costs a company $5,000 to $10,000 upfront, plus about $100 per month per page of copy and/or graphics. So far, John Bartlett, Joop, Robert Massimo Freda and Tommy Zung have set up sites where users can browse and place on-line orders for pieces in their collection via modem or 800 number.
Meanwhile, only 4 months old, the less interactive MCI’s @fashion has already attracted its share of critics. Windows Sources magazine, a reference guide for on-line services, calls the company’s on-line fashion programming, largely made up of runway news, “difficult to use . . . and worth avoiding.”
And the show’s host, VH-1’s fashion reporter Jeanne Beker, says that in the “rush to get something out there, the fashion offering has already become stale.” Plans are under way, she says, to reformat the entire service.
Elsewhere on the Net are a smattering of apparel labels, such as L.A.-based Product, Joe Boxer and Nicole Miller, with independent sites. These, experts say, cost anywhere from $10,000 to $300,000 to start up.
“We primarily use our site as an information resource,” says Mirena Kim, executive vice president of marketing at Product, a women’s contemporary line. “We use it to tell consumers who we are, what we do as a company, and to give them a feeling about the new collections.”
Kim says consumers can then either purchase items at local stores or fax a computerized order form to the manufacturer.
About 25,000 users a day sign on to Product’s Internet site. Joe Boxer received 90,000 inquires last week alone, spokeswoman Denise Slattery says. Yet, there is no way to measure how much of that interest translates into sales.
“Brand building, not a direct sale, is our priority,” Slattery says. “But we expect [the site] to eventually boost sales, although we don’t have the internal controls to register those yet.”
Boston Prep’s Narasin initially considered but then rejected the idea of promoting his label on its own, likening that strategy to “building a kiosk in the desert.”
“If you want to become Las Vegas, you’ve got to do a lot more than that. You’ve got to do plenty of marketing, build roads and basically have great casinos,” he says.
But like Vegas, it isn’t all things to all people. For one thing, the Internet Fashion Mall is top-heavy with menswear. That’s because Net users are still predominantly men (88%, according to a Microsoft survey), Narasin says. Yet women do most of the shopping for households and make up the fastest-growing computer consumer group.
As such, the Internet Fashion Mall is taking baby steps to accommodate them. While a man can learn “how to tie a tie” on the MR magazine site (a menswear trade publication), a woman might master “12 ways to tie a scarf” at the Accessories magazine site. And Sharon Schlegal, a fashion writer with Newhouse Wire Service, will answer questions about women’s wear, a counterpart to a menswear column by designer Alan Flusser.
The Mall also hopes to establish itself as a resource for fashion insiders. For instance, through the Mall, fashion editors from around the world will be able to access media kits and artwork electronically. And using a special access code, retail buyers can purchase merchandise wholesale for their stores through Mall vendors.
Narasin doesn’t know what kind of financial rewards the Mall might produce. But, he says, it is predicted that business transacted on-line could exceed $1 billion by the year 2000 and if apparel represents just 10% of that amount, “that’s $100 million.”
Nevertheless, experts believe cyberfashion is still a long way from replacing the conventional mall experience. For one thing, unless a computer user has pricey color stabilizing software--and most home users don’t, Narasin says--viewers may have some difficulty actualizing colors. Black appears as a speckled pattern.
“It’s crude, it’s limited and it’s experimental,” says Andrew Kantor, senior editor at Internet World magazine of the world of computer shopping, “but just give it a year. It will get better.”
“I can see consumers using it as one would use a catalogue,” says @fashion’s Beker. “But there’s something about the shopping experience that some of us really get off on. I was with Isaac Mizrahi a couple of weeks ago and asked him what he thought about all this. And his answer was, ‘Look, they invented escalators too! But some of us still use the stairs.’ ”
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Where to Sign On
MCI’s @fashion: HTTP://www.internetMCI.com
Internet Fashion Mall: HTTP://www.
fashionmall.com
Official debut will be Aug. 24 to coincide with long-awaited debut of Microsoft Windows 95. People who don’t have access to the Internet can get free Windows software and 30-day free usage by phoning (212) 721-1788.
Nicole Miller: HTTP://nicolemiller.com
Joe Boxer: HTTP://www.joeboxer.com
Product: HTTP://www.productnet.com
