California Apparel News

Holiday expenditures account for almost a quarter of all receipts

Reston, Va.–headquartered Internet research company comScore Networks estimated that e-commerce spending leading up to Christmas 2006 rose 26 percent over last year, beating its own prediction of a 24 percent rise. The period extends for 56 days, over which comScore tracks online retailers using MediaMetrix audience behavior and measurement services.

The apparel and accessories category was up 30 percent over the same period last year. Total holiday purchases online were estimated to be $23.11 billion.

Sales during the week prior to Christmas (Dec. 18–24) rose 38 percent over the same week in 2005. Most notably, year-todate non-travel e-commerce spending surpassed the $100 billion mark for the first time on Dec. 23.

“Online sales continued to show strong growth during the last week before Christmas, when procrastinators were clicking with confidence,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of com- Score. “Consumers making purchases in those final days expressed both their faith in retailers’ ability to pick and pack their orders in a timely fashion and shippers’ ability to drop them on recipients’ doorsteps in time for Christmas.

“That online retail consumer spending for the year to date has surpassed the $100 billion mark is a testament to the continued growth and strength of the online marketplace,” continued Fulgoni. “Retail e-commerce now accounts for approximately 7 percent of consumers’ U.S. retail spending [excluding gas, automobiles and food], making it an important component of the total U.S. economy.”

Amazon.com led Web retailers with the highest volume of sales, according to comScore, followed by Dell Inc. (www.dell.com), Yahoo! Inc. (www.yahoo.com) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (www.walmart.com). Amazon said this season was its best ever, with the busiest day being Dec. 11. Yahoo! Shopping reported that the number of visitors to the site rose 34 percent in December, compared with the year-earlier period.

Tech commentator/critic John Dvorak, writing in the San Francisco–based online Dow-Jones MarketWatch, furthered the significance of these reports, stating that “this may be the year bricks-and-mortar retailers are finally forced to take the Internet seriously, as Christmas e-tail sales may now be seriously impacting storefront sales.” Dvorak concluded that all the trends, “when viewed from a distance, make it apparent that next year’s Christmas buying season will be lengthier and, if all goes well, record-breaking.”

Locally, a KABC-TV consumer poll done in early December revealed that 50 percent of Southern Californians would be doing at least some online holiday shopping this season, while KNBC-TV’s more recent poll showed that online purchasing peaked Dec. 13 with more than $670 million being spent on holiday gifts online on just that one day.

From any point of view, this is big—very big. Retail, as it has been known, is entering a state of total transformation.

Site Review: Look & Like

San Mateo, Calif.–based Riya Inc. owns and is the developer of one of the most advanced shopping portals we’ve seen: Like (www.like.com). Visually based product searching versus text-based searching, which is predominantly used throughout the Web now, is indeed a worthwhile advancement. Like has taken an enormous plunge with software that’s proprietary and a bit too mind-boggling to attempt to describe. Suffice it to say, it just works with a wonderfully intuitive feel.

“Like.com is the first true visual search engine, where the contents of photos are used to search and retrieve similar items. We believe that there are literally millions of items that are difficult to describe via text-based search and where individual tastes are all over the map—think of your favorite pair of earrings or shoes and what an ordeal it can be to find something new but in a similar style. We created Like.com to solve the challenge of finding ’the perfect you’ for a broad range of aesthetic and soft goods,” said Like Chief Executive Officer Munjal Shah.

The site’s “About Us” page goes on to explain: “Like.com utilizes our likeness technology to create a digital signature that describes the photo’s contents and enables a more accurate search for similar-looking items and products. Our initial launch focuses on handbags, jewelry, shoes and watches—allowing users to search and purchase items from thousands of leading and boutique brands. We will very quickly add clothing and a number of other aesthetically oriented product categories.”

Presently, you can view celebrities and the accessories they are wearing and then go right to stores selling similar items. Visitors can compare prices from various affiliated stores, and they can browse by star, trend, category or what’s new.

Shah said he is planning to expand the feature into other clothing categories, such as women’s tops, in the coming weeks and will continue to introduce new categories “until we complete them all.”

However, Like’s celebrity shopping feature, called “Look aLike,” has drawn criticism from competing shopping site StarStyle.com, which says Like uses celebrity likenesses to sell products without securing the stars’ permission. According to a company spokesperson, StarStyle.com has existing deals with resources such as Creative Artists Agency and Lions Gate to feature their clients on its site.