USA: Online apparel tries to sell the perfect fit

MyShape.com lets its customers try on its clothes without ever touching them.

The online retailer based in Altadena, Calif., asks its customers to send in their measurements and then the website offers a collection of outfits that suit their shapes and styles.

Louise Wannier, myShape Inc.'s co-founder, says the company strives to answer the concern that keeps most people from buying clothes online: Will this fit?

It is companies like Ms. Wannier's that are breathing life into the world of wardrobe shopping on the Web, a sector plagued by consumer dissatisfaction and merchandise return rates of as high as 45 per cent.

Online sales of clothing, footwear and accessories in the United States are expected to hit $22.1-billion (U.S.) this year, a 21-per-cent jump from 2006, replacing computers as the largest online retail category, according to studies compiled in an eMarketer report.

The growing, but still small, number shows that the apparel industry has a long way to go online.

Internet sales accounted for only 8 per cent of all U.S. apparel sales last year while 41 per cent of computer equipment sales were completed online.

And with the three largest online apparel retailers - Victoria's Secret, L.L. Bean Inc. and Gap Inc. - accounting for only 27 per cent of sales in 2006, the market is wide open for smaller retailers that use innovative marketing techniques to overcome consumer resistance.

Robert Holloway, former marketing head at jeans maker Levi Strauss & Co., says overcoming buyer worries about sizes is a key to building a successful clothing business online.

"People were very nervous ... about buying clothing because you're not sure if it's going to fit you and then you've got to return it."

Now he is one of the brains behind Zafu, a search engine company based in Emeryville, Calif., that takes shoppers' body measurements and then searches a product database to find clothes that fit.

About two million women have used the service since it began a year ago and 94 per cent of users say the clothing fits, Mr. Holloway said.

When high-tech sizing services are not available, retailers find liberal shipping and return policies are important to online sales success.

Janice Ponce owns Tulip Hill Inc., a women's fashion boutique in Penticton, B.C., and about a year ago she decided to move some inventory online instead of opening up a second location.

"What we had to do when we started this website a year ago was make sure, because people have to try stuff on, that it's a 100-per-cent money-back guarantee," Ms. Ponce said. "If it doesn't fit, send it back."

The store also usually picks up half of the shipping costs.

Boutiques find offering personalized touches and good, old-fashioned customer service is the best way to entice shoppers online.

Leigh Thompson runs Paper-Doll.com Inc., a Toronto-based boutique that has been selling women's clothing exclusively on the Internet since it opened in 1998.

"We have an online help service, so anybody can browse to the site and get real-time online help during business hours, which a lot of people like because they don't have to take the time to lift up the phone or e-mail," she said.

The slow pace of e-commerce in Canada makes statistics about domestic shopping habits hard to come by.

According to a recent report by Forrester Research Inc., 74 per cent of Canadian consumers were online in 2006 but just 40 per cent of those online visitors bought something over the Web.