Experience with clothing sites?

clothing stores online

[66sore]

Does anyone have experience converting advertisers or better yet, entire sites dedicated to clothes?

I'm creating an e-commerce (web site/store + affilaite marketing) proposal for a upscale men's retailer and want to know if there really is a chance for a small clothing store to sell over the web...

[skibum]

I'd say it takes a strong brand or a market niche (big & tall for example). Clothing stores online are a dime a dozen and they almost all discount like crazy.

People do buy tons of clothing online so there is opportunity, product returns are sometiems very high.

[Essex_boy]

I have a clothing site aimed a women teh amrgins are around 50%, biggest problem is teh constantly changing stock from the suppliers.

The size situ isnt easy either.

Its not teh easiest niche to be involved with.

[Undead Hunter]

I consult with a clothing etailer. She sells in a niche - the margins are low. She can have tremendous volume, do $20k-$30k of sales in a month but still end up with pretty little profit by the end of it. And at this point she has to hire part-timers to get it all shipped out.

Other big problem - the margins are low, its lower-end clothing so she can't buy AdWords effectively. We've experimented, and it ends up netting a profit of as little as $2 per sale and in low volume, like 10-30 per week so its not worth the bother. Yes, she could be gaining future customers at a low rate, but she does very little resale, its the nature of the niche.

If you have something high end, maybe leather jackets or whatever, yes, there's much more room for profit but then who spends $200 on something without trying it on? I might buy, say, another pair of tennis shoes the same as the ones I have now if they're cheaper than going to the store.

Nothing I've seen has made me want to jump into clothing myself.

[hutchins13]

I manage web sites for small retailers and most do very well online. Some now have higher revenue from their web sites than from in-store sales. I have had the most success with name brand products.

[Michael Anthony]

Unless it's got a great USP (Like the "dress like the stars do" site that does real well in the UK) I'd suggest it was a pretty crowded market and fairly mature, so opportunities and as has been mentioned above, margins, are likely to be slim.

[TurboDan]

I built and manage a site for an online-only small women's clothing business, and the owner does pretty well on it. He sells through Yahoo! Stores, but of course, I built the site without the templates.

We do most of the advertising in Overture, which seems to perform better than Google for him.

[badmonkey]

I have built sites for two local clothing stores that both do fairly well online. Both sell high end product though and neither of them rely on the online business to survive. In my experience, clothing sales are not the most profitable area to be in by far but I think a well designed site in a specific niche and with quality inventory can turn a nice profit.