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Source: ONE News
Photo blogger Tommy Ton used to wait outside exclusive venues
for fashionistas to arrive and leave catwalk shows, but at the
latest Dolce & Gabbana womenswear run this season, he proudly
sat in the front row.
Sitting close to the creme de la creme of fashion editors - Vogue's
Anna Wintour and Glenda Bailey of Harper's Bazaar - the Toronto
fashionista excitedly blogged about his privileged treatment in
Milan on his site
www.jakandjil.com from his
seat.
"I've been going (to fashion week) for two years and I was lucky if
I even got a response," he said.
"But being embraced by Dolce & Gabbana, that was a defining
moment."
Soon after his success in Milan, French maisons sent him
invitations to Paris fashion week, eager to have him at their
shows.
Fashion brands, increasingly aware of the power of bloggers, are
making room for them in their front-row seats to try to grab
consumers before they visit their stores.
For years, traditional houses have shunned the internet, seeing it
mostly as a place for those in search of bargains.
But as younger buyers and working women are set to replace ageing
customers as the main luxury consumers, the web and its social
networking sites represent strong prospects for growth.
In the September fashion week run, such design houses as Louis
Vuitton, Dolce & Gabbana and Alexander McQueen, streamed their
catwalk shows on the internet.
Facebook is full of brands, including Vuitton, Gucci and Burberry
with hundreds of thousands of fans, who also voice their passion
for fashion on Twitter.
"The more you can open up your brand to the client, the better,"
Gucci designer Frida Giannini told a luxury conference in Berlin
last month.
Fashion dotcom
Many fashion brands have opened online stores in the last year,
including Salvatore Ferragamo and Roberto Cavalli.
Hugo Boss, which sells on the Internet in Europe, plans for
online stores in Asia and in the United States.
"We try to understand the online shopper in a deep way," Chief
Executive Claus-Dietrich Lahrs told the Berlin conference.
Giorgio Armani has a mobile phone platform for e-commerce, so users
can shop for Emporio Armani items from their handsets.
Prada is looking at selling online products that have yet to make
it into its stores.
"In five years, 30% of (fashion) goods will be sold on the Internet
in America," Prada Chief Executive Patrizio Bertelli was quoted in
Italian newspapers as saying, without giving a comparative
figure.
When Italian online fashion retailer Yoox launched in 2000, there
was a lot of scepticism about the internet in general and online
sales, founder and Chief Executive Federico Marchetti said.
Now it also operates retail sites for brands like Valentino and
Marni.
Yoox is poised for an initial public offering this week in
Milan.
"Increasingly fashion brands are shifting their communication
budgets to the Web, and have a greater understanding of its
potential and in particular they now are all requesting an online
store," he said in emailed comments.
Luxury groups are focusing on winning customers as they emerge from
the worst economic crisis in decades.
Bain & Co, a consultancy, expects luxury sales to fall eight
percent this year to 153 billion euros.
While online sales are unlikely to make up the difference soon,
consumers' growing confidence and comfort in using the internet to
shop provide positive signals.
Bain says luxury shame - the fear of being seen shopping for
luxurious items in a recession - is also helping.
It sees 2009 online luxury sales up 20% to 3.6 billion euros -
representing 2.35% of total luxury sales this year.
Luxury goods companies were very traditional in their advertising
methods and tools and in what they thought of consumers, Bain
partner Claudia d'Arpizio said.
"Now they understand the consumer age is different and their values
are changing so (they) need different tools to attract and interest
them."
In the United States, while most sectors of the economy experienced
a downturn in the first quarter of 2009, online sales for 80
retailers rose by an average 11%, according to a report by the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Ferragamo Chief Executive Michele Norsa said he saw its online
store becoming a nice shop next year with several million euros in
sales.
Echoing Norsa, Valentino's top executive, Stefano Sassi, said its
store that sells accessories and its younger line was in constant
growth.
Allure of the web
The web's allure is easy to understand.
Designers can present their creations directly to customers
without relying on media reviews, which may not be
favourable.
Designers can also save on advertising, especially as they cut
marketing budgets.
When it comes to global advertising, the Internet is the only
medium expected to expand - with 9.2% growth forecast for 2009 -
while all other media are set to shrink, according to media agency
ZenithOptimedia.
"(The web) is very important by the sheer fact people are spending
more time online, on Facebook, Twittering," Emanuel Ungaro Chief
Executive Mounir Moufarrige said.
He said online and glossy magazine ads were complementary.
One challenge fashion houses will face will be how to deal with the
lag between photos of new collections going online as they are
presented and them hitting the stores six months later, when they
could seem dated.
"If you're an artist and the only one who can come up with those
colour combinations and those prints ... people will wait as long
as they have to," said Scott Schuman, a fashion industry
veteran-turned-blogger through his The Sartorialist site.
"If you're just an everyday designer and you've just come out with
some thing and somebody else can do it better, cheaper or get it to
(consumers) faster, they'll buy that."
With new web ventures like Dolce & Gabbana's magazine Swide and
Burberry's social network site
www.artofthetrench.com,
many maisons are constantly thinking of new online tools to woo
fans.
"It's marketing as usual, this just happens to be the new thing,"
Schuman said.
