Deirdre McQuillanon the extraordinary success of online fashion and beauty retailer ASOS. She talks to founder Nick Robertson
IT ALL BEGAN, according to chief executive Nick Robertson, with picture frames and Jamie Oliver pestles and mortars. Robertson, a great-grandson of Austin Reed, founder of the UK menswear chain, was a young marketing executive when he set up a website called ASOS (As Seen on Screen) in June 2000, selling everything but clothes to internet-savvy 16- to 34-year-olds. It was based on discovering that after an episode of Friends, NBC got 25,000 calls asking about a table lamp. “We needed the power of celebrity endorsement to sell product,” he recalls.
It was Lorri Penn from Topshop, whom he hired as a buyer, that steered ASOS into fashion. Penn went to suppliers to find clothes similar to those seen on music videos and worn by celebrities, “and it struck quite a nerve”, says Robertson. Today, ASOS has become the UK’s largest fashion website, attracting more than a million visitors a week, with more than 9,000 products, a staff of 700 and an annual turnover of £80 million, defying the current downturn. “The young are still spending, but migrating from stores to websites,” says Robertson.
From showing customers how to emulate designer looks, ASOS has grown to become an enormous online department store, with everything under one roof. “You might see a thousand dresses in a department store, but that will take you a long time, and in literally two minutes you can find 2,000 on our website,” says Robertson. The site’s busiest selling time is 9pm, and at lunchtime when 70,000 visitors mill around the site in one hour.
The figures speak for themselves: 1.7 million registered e-mail customers, 39,000 Irish customers and 20,000 orders shipped each day from a vast warehouse in Hemel Hempstead, each order containing an average of 2.5 items. “We sold 900 of one dress in one day – a Roland Mouret style for €45,” says Robertson.
The magazine, which goes out free to the company’s best customers, has a circulation of 360,000 and growing.
Price, of course, is a key factor. Costs can be kept down because ASOS doesn’t own shops, buys merchandise directly from suppliers, has its own team of designers, and increases its brand offer each season. Next spring’s collection is colourful, easy-going and youthful, with many items based on US thrift-store finds. With more than 400 dresses, a whole new denim “emporium”, loads of accessories, and young designer lines, ASOS spreads its net wide. Menswear combines edgy skateboard styles with tailoring and alluring price tags. A preppy gingham seersucker jacket, for example, was €45.
Inevitably, sometimes items are returned. But Robertson, who admits that 21 per cent of the units sent out come back, says the figure is the same for stores.
Future plans include introducing childrenswear, eco-friendly lines and widening distribution in Europe, and introducing international brands to the UK. Currently ASOS’s three biggest markets are Ireland, Denmark and Sweden, with age profiles split equally between 16-24 and 25-34. “Our plan is to build an international platform,” says Robertson. “And fortunately the tide is with us at the moment.”