Fashion Warehouse ?! Who are we faking ?
5-7 min is what sites gets from a consumer in each of his
visit. That’s all !
And there are ecom retailers who are claiming themselves as fashion warehouses. For whom ?
In that 7 min is it possible to show him the warehouse/
large assortment of merchandise ? Meaningfully ? Maybe it can be attempted in
the categories like electronics, where Brands/ portals does not need to take a
stand. And fashion cannot exist without a stand.
Arguably, fashion has to take a stance, operate from point of view. Benjamin Kranenk a leading designer
came up with fashion Pyramid which stacks fashion rightly. Mass produced and
available is to all, are essentially most basic garments. They are Industrial.
Without a point of view. As per him,
right degree of fashion which should be made available to the fashion connoisseurs
is couture. Which is contemporary. And yet a little pret.
Fashion has its own stages. Last stage is mass production
and diluted point of view. This is stage is just before fashion is likely to go
out. What happens to Baggi jeans, few years back is a good example. When whole
world started to wear it, it vanished. It no longer remained aspirational. This
is happening rather faster in recent times. Check shirts became half of shirts
sales in 2012. And then suddenly prints took over. Dropping checks to 10-15%. It’s
a cycle. And its very disappointing to see retailers selling the Dying trend to consumer, on name of Fashio.
Ecommerce players catering to masses and offering
merchandise with no point of view, are fooling customers by calling it as
fashion! And maybe abusing the word “fashion”.
Variety of all sorts put together cannot be called as fashion. Abundance is not
fashion. Fashion has to have a story. An attitude. A distinction. Scarcity.
In effect, Consumer are left with no choice but to try and
interpret fashion in their own way. They make a buy, and often realizes that
putting bought garment together with what they already have is difficult. No
story is being formed. And hence the garment goes back to wardrobe and gets
cleared in Diwali cleaning. Unfortunate. It pains me.
Retailers should make a choice, either to become like discounted , wide, industrial houses. Selling to people who does not care for fashion. Like dfwh. Or remain honest to fashion. They cannot be both. It's dishonestly.
Ecommerce sites have large customer base and have instant
access to very large population, they should take up the responsibility of
helping consumer understand the fashion and identify his own choice and taste. This
should be enabled by technology and data churning.
Customer should be treated as an individual and offering
should be filtered for his taste, And customer should, eventually buy from handpicked , curated fashion
assortments. And enjoy wearing it. Such sites should create couture fashion
which is affordable.
