Net-a-Porter founder's insights about selling online
The Wall St. Journal magazine interviewed the founder of the online store Net-a-Porter. I think her views may be able to help Bridge partners sell more. Some excerpts are below:
Excerpts:
People have attributed the site’s success to the black box. I think it’s because everyone had such low expectations of what online shopping would be—that it had to be no-frills, discounted goods picked from a shelf and shoved into an ordinary cardboard box. We’ve gone to the other extreme, which is to see how many times you can fold a garment within layers of tissue paper to protect and celebrate the purchase.
Brands will increasingly handle their own e-commerce and rely less and less on local distribution partners. Why should they give away their profit margins? This means any multibrand store will need to rethink their reason for being. It shouldn’t be just because they have the product. It should be that they’re the best marketing partner to the brand.
I believe that all brands will become storytellers, editors and publishers, all stores will become magazines and all media companies will become stores. There will be too many of all of them. The strongest ones, the ones who offer the best customer experience, will survive.
When you are selling from a digital screen, you need to reach out to the consumer in entirely new ways. You have to create content and visual excitement that draws a person in and gives them a reason to come to your website. The brands that are the most successful online today understand this.
Fashion magazines have been the marketing arms of the retail industry for at least the last 50 or 60 years; they just never collected any revenue from the final sale. For 10 years, Net-a-Porter has been focusing on how to create excitement for the product by doing everything that a good fashion journalist learns how to do. You edit, you have a point of view and you present the product in the best way. Magazines were what got people to go into stores and seek out that product to try on. I’ve always thought that the sale was actually made in the magazine pages.