Sears, Roebuck and Co. is adding a full line of apparel to its Web site in hopes of carving out a piece of the second-biggest market in the e-commerce industry.
The soft launch of women’s, men’s and children’s clothing–as well as bedroom and bathroom products–began during the weekend on Sears.com, and the additions became official Monday.
Previously, the only clothes the Hoffman Estates retailer sold online were school uniforms and items linked to specialty catalogs. Even with that limited assortment, clothing and home fashions historically have gotten the second-highest number of clicks on Sears.com–after appliances.
“At the end of the day, you need to do what your customers want you to do,” said Bill Bass, general manager for Sears Customer Direct, adding that Sears.com has a big customer base with its 80 million unique visitors a year.
The debut of national and private clothing brands to Sears.com comes as apparel sales are falling in its brick-and-mortar stores. And Internet selling has been a tough proposition for even the mightiest merchant. For example, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recently announced it would take another stab at selling apparel online after an earlier effort fizzled. One of the thorniest problems for e-tailers: a relatively high number of returns due to the difficulty of online sizing, particularly for dressier women’s duds.
While Saks Fifth Avenue’s direct business, including Internet, is growing at a 50 percent clip, “returns in apparel are high” because of sizing issues, Saks Inc. Chief Operating Officer Stephen Sadove said in an interview last week at Goldman Sachs’ Global Retailing Conference.
But there are potential rewards. Online clothing sales are expected to rise from $8.2 billion nationwide in 2004 to $20.2 billion in 2010, eventually surpassing computer hardware as the biggest sector in online retail, according to Forrester Research Inc.
Still, online apparel sales are still a small percentage of retailers’ overall sales. At specialty clothing merchant Chico’s FAS Inc., for example, e-commerce accounts for 3 percent of sales.
To launch online apparel, Sears borrowed heavily from its Lands’ End unit, which started selling on the Internet in 1995. Lands’ End online sales rose to $511 million in 2003 from $435 million in 2002.
“We had a team from Lands’ End help design our online shopping for apparel,” Bass said.
Technology on Sears.com will help lessen the chance that shoppers will be unhappy with their purchases, he said.
“We’re giving them the ability to visualize how Sears’ products will fit into their lives,” Bass said.
The technology is called My Virtual Model. To “try on” clothing, shoppers provide body-type descriptions and height and weight measurements to create a customized online “model.”
LandsEnd.com rolled out the My Virtual Model, developed by a Montreal firm of the same name, in 1998.
The latest version, available on Sears.com, also allows shoppers to zoom in to scrutinize the fabric, as well as to change colors. Sears.com also said it’s the first national retailer to allow online shoppers to mix and match multiple brands.
But Sears.com, at launch, will lack a couple of features of LandsEnd.com. The latter has a “Lands’ End Live” feature enabling shoppers to correspond online with a real person. Sears.com won’t, but it will list phone numbers to call, Bass said.
Sears.com customers also will be among the first to be able to buy Structure, a men’s line bought from Limited Brands. Structure debuts this fall in 115 Sears stores in Chicago and four other markets. A/Line, the women’s line made solely for Sears by Jones Apparel Group, also launches online and in 435 stores this fall.
