Online retail sales flourish

Internet shopping can officially no longer be sidelined. Recent reports show that over a third of consumers have bought some of their clothes over the Internet in the last year.Last year £4.3 billion worth of clothes were bought over the internet, a growth of

152% in the last five years, according to the report by Mintel, the market research company. More than a third, 35%, of shoppers bought their clothes online in the last 12 months, up from 26% the previous year. The research company predicted that the online clothing market would hit £4.8 billion by the end of this year, despite the marked slowdown in consumer spending on the high street.

And sales have continued to flourish through the first quarter of 2011 with a 18% rise. Even during March, one of the worst months in recent record for high street shops, a report from IMRG, the online shopping trading body and Capgemini, the consultancy, said that sales had jumped by 23%, compared with the year before.

The report said that the gap between multi-channel and online-only retailers continued to increase in March. Retailers with both a high-street and online presence achieved 19% growth on average compared with March last year, while online achieved just 6%.

Phillip Rinn, senior director of advertising at eBay International, said: "At a time when recent figures highlight wider retail sales have seen their worst monthly decline in 15 years, the increase in online retail revenue is particularly impressive and shows that at a time when belt tightening was expected across the board, online continues to buck the trend."

The general feeling from retailers was that more sophisticated, glossy websites with techy applications had helped the developments. For instance it has only been relatively recently that high street mainstays like Zara and Topshop have created fully transactional websites.
It’s quite a turnaround for the clothing market, with many believing at the time internet shopping was first developed, that it would always be hindered by the fact consumers couldn’t try on potential purchases.

However, Neil Saunders, at Verdict, a retail consultancy, said that many shoppers, particularly women, had got over this hurdle. "Many now prefer to buy clothes online and try them on in the privacy of their own home than in a changing room. They get around the problem by ordering multiple sizes and sending back the ones they don't want. Of course, this can be costly for the retailers that pick up the cost of this."