Is E-Commerce Out of Fashion?

Luxury is struggling, fast fashion is booming—what does it mean for the future of e-commerce?

Originally there was an entirely different topic on hand for this edition of Future Shopping. But news was coming thick and fast about the problems of several key players in the e-commerce apparel industry.

First the surprising demise of Matches, the luxury fashion e-commerce giant which once had a valuation of over BRL 5 billion and just a few weeks ago was shuttered by its new owners (about which more later). This was on the heels of the abrupt shifts in the fortunes of Farfetch and Yoox Net A Porter (YNAP used to be 2 different companies doing the same thing and were merged in 2015 to find "synergies"). All of this while I was being bombarded on Instagram with sponsored posts from the fast-fashion flavor-of-the-moment Shein.

Clearly a change of direction for this column was in order, causing me to be 2 weeks late on submitting my column to my patient, beleaguered editor. Sorry about that.

For this edition we're going to get our heads out of the UX and the consumer experience and take a lesson from the world of fashion to see why certain e-commerce businesses thrive, why others don't, and what happens when things don't go as planned. We'll focus on fashion because it is one thing that practically all developed economies have in common: We all wear clothes (at least most of the time) and we all see clothing ads across every media touchpoint. Furthermore, it is an industry that existed before e-commerce, was seriously disrupted by e-commerce, and (as we will see) continues to struggle to align with the continually evolving digital/analog behaviors of today's shoppers.

We begin with a semi-global musical act from the late 1980s called Bros.

When Will I Be Famous?

The freshly scrubbed, youthful band Bros released a poppy, upbeat song in 1989 called When Will I Be Famous? that more or less ushered in the era of music when electronic sounds started hitting mainstream pop and lyrical content voiced the inner musings of a new, media savvy generation. The song's lyrics nicely bridge the media gap between the old world ("When will I see my picture in the paper?") and the newer, instant-on world of digitally driven fame for the sake of fame ("You've suffered for your art / With the jogging in the park / You know you should go far"). We mine these depths of pop music obscurity to bring to the surface a trio of realities that seem to form an investment model for initial success in e-commerce: Ubiquity, accessibility, and recognition.