Azalea's Spirit of Adventure
Azalea set out to be the alternative boutique in San Francisco’s eclectic Hayes Valley neighborhood. It’s one reason the shop’s co-owners, Catherine Chow and Corina Nurimba, built an organic beauty salon in back of their fashion boutique. It gave the style-conscious a novel reason to stick around their 1,500-square-foot shop.
Chow promised that, by November, the spirit of adventure in their bricks-and-mortar retail shop would extend to their Web site, azaleaonline.com.
“A lot of Web sites are merely transactional- based,” said Chow. “It’s just for you to buy products and leave the site.” She hopes shoppers from around the world will flock to the boutique’s planned “lifestyle” Web site. She plans for it to feature blogs from designers, as well as an instant messaging service where store customers can pepper Azalea’s stylists with fashion questions.
Chow forecasts that the site will boost ecommerce sales from its current status of raking in 20 percent of Azalea sales to 50 percent.
A lifestyle Web site could be crucial to the marketing of any store, said Tanya Zilinskas, owner of the San Francisco fashion e-commerce site Maneater Threads. She contends that consumers demand more from e-commerce sites than simply presenting a display of wares.
Zilinskas credits the social networking Web site MySpace.com with driving these new demands. MySpace is the most popular site in the United States, accounting for 4.5 percent of all Web site visits, according to Reuters. Many of MySpace users add music and video to enhance the experience. Without these literal bells and whistles, a Web site can look obsolete. “It’s a great way to involve the customer in your store,” Zilinskas said of multimedia pages.
If Azalea’s aggressive push into cyberspace creates a bigger forum for the store, new shoppers should find a mix of fashion that extends from suits to casual clothing for men and women.
Last week, the top-selling item for women was a very skinny jean by Los Angeles–based J Brand. The $139 stretch-denim jean is black, pencil-legged and has 12-inch leg openings. For men, the top-selling item was the “Penn” polo shirt by J. Lindeberg. The $69 shirt’s most popular feature is its body-hugging fit, Chow said. The shirt also may prove that some things never go out of style. Black was the most popular color choice of Penn polo, she said. —Andrew Asch
