N Brown To Conquer Footwear Market

Home shopping company N Brown aims to become the UK's number one online ladies' footwear retailer with the launch of its new dedicated shoe website, VivaLaDiva.com. The company aims to capitalise on the emotional bond all women have with shoes to capture sales of £4.8m within the website's first year of trading and forecasts 30 per cent year-on-year growth.

Due to go live this autumn, VivaLaDiva will offer leading brands including Hobbs, Schuh, Miss Sixty, Birkenstock and Clarks. Viva la Diva will also support the UK's burgeoning couture footwear industry by offering shoes from a stable of designers including Georgina Goodman, Olivia Morris, Adele Clarke, Jane Brown and Rupert Sanderson.

This Couture Boutique will launch on the site for spring/summer 2005, with more UK and international designer names to be announced soon. Under the label DivaFeet, the site will also sell own-brand shoe and footwear accessories, such as style-focused storage boxes. The branding and design of the VivaLaDiva site will reflect the label-loving aspirations of its fashion-conscious female audience.

The website launch follows a survey of 2,500 women, commissioned specifically for VivaLaDiva, which reveals that a quarter of women between the ages of 25 and 55 have bought shoes online, while almost six in 10 have made footwear purchases from a mail-order catalogue. According to the recent study, 43 per cent of women find the internet more convenient than the high street when shopping for shoes, while three in 10 agree that online prices are more competitive, and 15 per cent believe that e-commerce sites are more able to meet their specialist needs, such as wider fittings, than traditional shoe shops.