Mele’s Musings

The web drives retail

The next wave of retail innovation may very well start in the digital space.

Picture: blog.rssapplied.com

Article excerpt: Merchants beef up their current sites and launch new brands online to make the Internet do more. When American Eagle Outfitters Inc. introduces its fourth major retail brand this fall in time for the holiday shopping season, the launch won’t feature a ribbon cutting ceremony or a spotlight shining on a storefront. Instead, the launch of 77kids, an apparel brand that will target children ages 2 through 10, will happen where American Eagle Outfitters’ customers spend most of their time: online. “We’re launching 77kids as an e-commerce site first because we can target customers and perfect the marketing and merchandising strategy at a critical time faster than we can with other channels,” says American Eagle Outfitters chief marketing officer Kathy Savitt. “The Internet provides us with the perfect vehicle to reach a key audience of shoppers.” Chains may have been asleep at the Internet wheel, but the economic potholes of the past year have awakened them to the web’s importance as a sales channel. For chain after chain—including Gap Inc. (No. 24), Office Depot Inc. (No. 3), Staples Inc. (No. 2), The Talbots Inc. (No. 64) and Williams-Sonoma Inc. (No. 21)—the web accounted for a small portion of sales last year, but a huge chunk of growth in total sales (see Internet Retailer, April 2008).
The rest: internetretailer.com

Musing: Lots of articles here about different retailers and their approaches to innovation in the digital space. American Eagle’s approach – to start a new apparel brand completely online – is interesting and potentially ground-breaking. In the future of retail, how important will social be? How important will personalized services be? How important will content be? The answers to these questions will completely change the way that retailers work in the future. As the line between digital and physical blurs, how much will these changes find their way into the actual retail space itself?