With increasing challenges being faced from the rapidly increasing e-commerce portals, several clothing retailers have begun introducing online sales to compliment their brick and mortar stores.
The brands which have introduced e-stores to support their offline stores include one of the world’s largest fashion retailer Inditex, the global adventure wear brand Woodland, the premium garment brand Monte Carlo and the British heritage brand Crombie.
Inditex, which has more than 6,000 stores in 86 markets worldwide and owns brands like Zara, Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home and Uterqüe, believes that Internet is an incredible tool for complementing brick and mortar stores. Speaking to fibre2fashion, chairman & CEO of Inditex Group, Mr. Pablo Isla said, “We consider online and offline sales as complimentary and three million people visit our web pages on average every day, which makes them an incredible tool to communicate with our customers.”
“Inditex has established online sales in the most relevant markets. We have a strong potential to continue expanding profitably in the coming years,” he opines. Echoing him, Mr. Amol Dhillon, vice-president - strategy & planning of Woodland, says, “We see a lot of potential in e-commerce and it has become an important platform for apparel sales.”
“Besides browsing through the Internet for accessing information about the latest fashion and trends, consumers have also started purchasing through the medium,” he adds. Although Internet accounts for a fraction of clothes sold at retail stores as of today, global brands see it as a medium to push their sales.
