Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Fashion Designers Turning To Cyber Sales

To keep sales churning, upscale department stores are expanding their selection online as they try to attract new and younger customers. And Internet-only global luxury players like net-a-porter.com and yoox.com are offering more cutting-edge designer labels and special services aimed at their biggest spenders.

It "looks like right now everyone is winning" in the online luxury business, said Sucharita Mulpuru, a luxury analyst at Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass.-based Internet research company.

Resistance from designers is subsiding, and as more designer brands sell online, luxury sales are expected to grow even further. Mulpuru forecast that about 14 percent of all luxury merchandise sales will be sold online by 2010, up from 8 percent last year. Mulpuru estimated that the compound annual growth rate for luxury sales from 2005 to 2010 will be 13 percent, compared to 14 percent for overall online sales.

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