Heavily hyped for its combination of cutting edge technology and up-to-the-minute fashions, Boo.com could have been the Amazon of the fashion world. Instead it has become an object lesson in what not to do with £80 million. While the stock the company carried was very good, its much-vaunted technology wasn't practical. With a high-speed connection you could zoom in on your choice of garment and check out the finer details, or spin it 365 and make sure, say, the soles of your trainers had sufficient grip. On the average home computer, though, the site's pages were slow to download and clunky to navigate.
Initially, due to pre-launch glitches, the site wasn't even Mac-compatible. No amount of clever advertising (their ad campaign was shot by Roman Coppola) can save a website that is difficult, if not impossible to use. Particularly when their target market, or "psycho-graphic" in current marketing parlance, was exactly that of i-Mac.
Apart from repurcussions on the stock exchange - apparently 10 per cent was wiped off the value of British technology stocks following their crash - Boo's demise should give food for thought to any fashion start-up. Is the web really an adequate medium for clothes shopping, given that so much of fashion is to do with cut and texture and how a garment hangs? Or should a fashion site avoid the pitfalls of e-commerce totally, and concentrate purely on information?
The whole point - the romance, if you like - of the web is that there is no formula. Successful fashion sites can be anything from e-zines, like Hint and Cool Girls Japan; to online versions of print titles, Sleaze Nation or Visionaire, for example; or information/vanity sites which act like brochures such as those built by Paul Smith and Todd Oldham who won, respectively, Webby and People's Voice Awards at this year's Webby Awards. These Oscars of the Internet are a good measure of what is valued online, and in the fashion nominations commerce didn't really figure apart from e-tailer Fashion UK.
Irish fashion for the most part has adopted a wait-and-see policy with ecommerce, opting instead to simply maintain a presence. Designer Marc O'Neill admits his site hasn't been updated since his webmaster moved to the US last year. Lack of technical support notwithstanding, O'Neill has no plans to use the site as a sales vehicle. "It's hard to get found unless you've links from other sites, or you use advertising to get back-up." He cites as a costly example Helmut Lang's double-page magazine ads consisting of nothing more than Lang's URL. "I would tend to use the site more as an add-on press or information tool. If I get inquiries from Canada or the US, I can direct them to the site."
Websites are ideal for creating brand awareness, because they can be far more subtle - and feel far more inclusive - than an ad campaign. Both Todd Oldham and Paul Smith use links and unrelated features to build up a picture of their worlds. In other words, you can look at their collections, but you also get a taste of their tastes, an idea of the personality behind the label. Smith, for example, has links to a British Mini site, while Oldham carries features on boules and music.
And it can be a reciprocal relationship. The speed and relative anonymity of email makes firing off a comment on a site, or indeed, a collection disarmingly easy.
A-Wear's online guestbook is a case in point. Although most of the comments posted consist of "Hiya, love your site. The colours are lovely", A-Wear's PR officer points out that "It's about providing information and getting feedback from customers." You can buy gift vouchers from the site, and order brochures, but as yet you can't buy clothes. "Online shopping is something that needs to be looked at very carefully. It's a huge process. Possibly later on, maybe six months down the line, but selling over the net is not a priority right now. People are already close to stores nearly everywhere, particularly now that we're in Northern Ireland as well."
Those sites that do succeed in selling fashion tend to have a loyal, or at least knowing, customer base already. Much of the gamble in online buying is removed when you're familiar with the sizing and the cut of a collection. Hobo has one of the few Irish sites to sell online - but Henry Jones, managing director, still has some reservations. "Well, you wouldn't buy high fashion over the web. Basic items, like T-shirts or perhaps cargo pants or chinos can be sold online because most of our customers are familiar with the fit. They know that their T-shirts will be a decent 240 gram cotton and the cut doesn't differ, but there may be a new print."
The difficulty lies in balancing a reliable shopping experience with sufficient seasonal change to satisfy the most impatient fashion fan - is there any other kind? "The site is being redesigned at the moment," says Jones. "But we're still getting a lot of hits on it, and there have been people from the US who have bought stuff in the shop on the basis of what they've seen on the site." Hobo sells streetwear and their customers are, as Jones says, dot.com oriented. But given Ireland's young and computer-literate population, they're hardly the exception. Fashion and technology can happily co-exist. Boo.com's cautionary tale aside, Irish fashion can only benefit from a web existence of some kind.
Links: www.hintmag.com; www.coolgirlsjapan.com; www.sleazenation.com; www.visionaireworld.com; www.paulsmith.co.uk; www.toddoldham.com; www.worldmedia.com/fashionuk/; www.marconeill.com; www.helmutlang.com; www.a-wear.ie; www.hobocorp.com
