"From mags to riches: Vogue's attempt to join the online shopping club falls flat"
Having read through the mixed opinions on Style.com in this thread, I thought I'd contribute with this article by John Arlidge that I read in The Times last month. I've placed a link the original article below the body text (hope this is OK –*I've only just started using TFS again so my memory of the posting rules is a bit foggy), but due to The Times's paywall you won't be able to read it in full if you don't have a subscription. So I thought I'd share! I found this a particularly revealing read and I, still devastated by the loss of the original Style.com, really enjoyed it. Quite damning about Yasmin Sewell. Would be interested to hear your thoughts.
***
"FROM MAGS TO RICHES: VOGUE'S ATTEMPT TO JOIN THE ONLINE SHOPPING CLUB FALLS FLAT
What do we need to stave off a post-Brexit referendum recession? Simple. Another fashion etailer to help us spend our way back to prosperity. Net-a-porter, Mr Porter, Matchesfashion, Farfetch, Yoox and Asos aren’t temptation enough. We need a shiny £75m start-up — and that’s what we’re getting.
Style.com is a new venture from Condé Nast. The world’s leading fashion-magazine publisher is taking a huge gamble that it can also become a fashion etailer. The launch has been endlessly delayed, but it finally went live two weeks ago and has been greeted with arched eyebrows. “They have to demonstrate that they are a capable retailer. It looks like it’s going to be tough,” said Luca Solca, a senior luxury goods analyst at the investment company Exane BNP Paribas.
That’s not just because Style.com is unfashionably late to the ecommerce party, and is taking on the big brands’ existing operations, as well as established and profitable rivals. It’s because, despite assurances that 200 brands had signed up, fewer than 100 were available on day one — and none of them was a superbrand.
When I interviewed Style.com executives last month, they insisted Gucci, Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, Chloé, Marni and Christopher Kane were partnering with the new site and many would be available at launch. Yasmin Sewell, 40, the former chief creative consultant for Liberty who is fashion director of the new site — running it with Franck Zayan, 51, former head of ecommerce at the Paris department-store group Galeries Lafayette — boasted she was creating “the world’s best personalised department store”.
But Style.com opened for business, without fanfare or even an official announcement, on August 31 with none of the promised world-beating labels. The only well-known brand available was Paul Smith — and it’s a tiddler. Its annual turnover is £200m. Gucci’s is £3.5bn.
Some big brands had appeared when this article went to press on September 2, the site’s official launch. But the collections were tiny, and selected by existing third-party retailers, notably boutiques, not Style.com. The Valentino pages offered just six items for women and nine for men. Only two of the leading labels promised in an official Condé Nast launch statement released that morning were on the site. Chloé, Maison Margiela, Marni, Christopher Kane, Dolce & Gabbana, Rick Owens and Vetements were absent. Net-a-porter and Mr Porter already sell thousands of pieces by these brands, as well as Gucci, Burberry and, from this season, Armani and Prada.
To many observers, the chaotic launch, after two years of preparation, suggests the site will struggle. “To have any hope of success, Style.com had to come out all guns blazing with the best brands. It has launched with a whimper,” said the chief executive of one leading label.
It was not supposed to be this way. When I met Zayan and Sewell in their new office in Camden Town, north London, they said they would revolutionise ecommerce by exploiting Condé Nast’s editorial strength and its magazines’ vast, fashion-savvy audience, all under the watchful eye of the US Vogue editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, who is now also artistic director of Condé Nast. “Style.com will work hand in hand with brands to market their products, using bespoke content, street-style imagery, editorial and catwalk imagery from Vogue, and Condé Nast archive material that goes back 107 years,” Sewell said.
Writers from Style.com’s own editorial team and the Condé Nast titles Vogue and GQ would report on the latest trends and help consumers to choose what to buy. “You are always inspired to purchase with editorial. Content and commerce live together,” said Sewell. Zayan added that the total global audience for Condé Nast’s magazines, websites and social media exceeds that of Net-a-porter or Matchesfashion — up to 300m people.
The duo explained that Style.com’s “S” logo would, from this month, start popping up on articles on Vogue.co.uk and GQ-magazine.co.uk, the magazines’ UK websites. If I liked something, I could simply click and buy it in a few seconds and then get back to reading. “We make articles easily shoppable,” said Zayan. They said that Style.com would market the collections, build the payments system and take a commission, rumoured to be a hefty 30%-40%. The brands would hold the stock, deliver to the customer and deal with returns.
Style.com, which is jointly owned by Condé Nast International, in London, and Condé Nast US, in New York, would, they went on, expand to include the global editions of Vogue and GQ. If it worked, the service would eventually encompass all Condé Nast titles, including Tatler, Condé Nast Traveller, Wired and Vanity Fair, selling holidays, wine and other fancy stuff. “The aim is to connect every magazine, to cover all lifestyle products,” Zayan said.
It sounded good, but the moment I began to check what they had told me, their optimism began to look misplaced. I phoned Gucci to make sure it was on board. A senior executive said it had not signed up. The brand had merely agreed to allow some items selected by the Paris boutique Colette to be featured, he said. I phoned Burberry and an executive there said that it, too, had not signed up, but she did say the brand was “in talks”. Then a Style.com executive emailed to tell me that neither Dolce & Gabbana nor Marni would be on the site at launch. Later I noticed that Gucci and Burberry had dropped off the list of leading brands Condé Nast promised in its launch statement on September 2.
Label chiefs say — privately — that they are reluctant to sign up because Style.com’s business model is misguided. It is positioning itself as a largely editorial “middle man” between brands and the consumers, when the key advantage that online offers is the chance to go direct to consumers. “Going straight to customers is easier and more profitable for us,” said one. “We’re even questioning our long-term association with other ‘brokers’, such as Net-a-porter — and that’s a retailer. So, why would we partner with a magazine?”
Style.com’s insistence that it will handle the money but the brands will take responsibility for delivery and returns of goods is fraught with problems, another added. “Making online shopping work is hard enough, even when you control the entire process,” she said.
The more I asked around, the worse it got. I discovered advertisements to promote the launch had been cancelled at the last minute. A leading industry observer pointed out that GQ had partnered with Mr Porter, a key Style.com competitor. Mr Porter’s website invites users to “Shop the best looks from the September issue of GQ”, with items branded “GQ selects”. Collaborating with a competitor was, he said, “confusing at best, bonkers at worst”.
Style.com’s USP is that it can offer superior editorial for both brands and buyers. But I found out that its dedicated editorial team is only eight-strong. That’s smaller than the team at Net-a-porter, who create the glossy Porter magazine and Mr Porter, a style newspaper. A first look at the site revealed weak, predictable editorial. “There is no exclusive content that would convince me to buy something from Paul Smith that I could not buy more easily from Paul Smith’s own excellent website,” said one user.
Senior executives of the big labels also told me that there were tensions between executives based at Condé Nast US and Condé Nast International over the direction of Style.com.
It was telling, they said, that there is no promotion of Style.com in the 800-page September issue of US Vogue or the fall issue of US GQ Style.
That might be because many in the magazine industry, including at Condé Nast, think that while it is easy for a retailer to become a publisher — Net-a-porter and Matchesfashion both publish glossy shopping catalogues masquerading as magazines — it’s tough for a publisher to become a retailer. It’s not simply that publishers have little or no experience of retail. Magazine editors and readers think they have a higher calling. They regard themselves as independent seekers after truth. Condé Nast Traveller’s motto is Truth in Travel. If readers of GQ, Vogue, Tatler and Traveller think their monthly glossy is being downgraded into a posh shopping catalogue, or that articles are being written merely to help partner brands sell stuff and earn Condé Nast a fat commission, rather than to interest them, they will stop subscribing.
Zayan and Sewell conceded the risk of commerce compromising editorial was “a big issue” and assured me there was a Chinese — no, a Donald Trump-sized Mexican border — wall between what they do and Condé Nast’s magazines. “We don’t dictate what they write in the magazines. We’re not influencing them,” Sewell said. Zayan added: “Style.com is a commerce destination. We are here to sell products. Magazines are different. There is that line, a separation. There needs to be that line.”
Some Condé Nast editors agree. Others, however, say the line between editorial and commerce in the fashion pages and on Style.com “is already blurred to indistinction”, as one puts it. Far from insisting the two are separate, these executives argue that Zayan and Sewell should celebrate Style.com’s link with the Condé Nast titles as the new venture’s key strength. The fashion glossies have always promoted brands — in return for advertising, one explained, and “our readers know and accept that. If readers like the clothes, they tear the page out of the magazine and go and buy the items. Style.com simply speeds up the shopping process. It’s a natural evolution of what we do.”
As this article was going to press, Sewell got in touch and asked to do another interview. She assured me that the big brands that she and Zayan had promised would arrive “between August 31 and into November”. But she couldn’t give me any firm dates. Asked whether Burberry was on board, she replied: “F****** hell, I hope so.” Although the official launch was on September 2, Sewell stressed that this was just the first stage and limited to the UK. Style.com had not “launched globally” yet, as her team wanted to “test” the site. “By the end of September into October, we will start opening up,” she said. In our final conversation she said that she had not realised I was “a serious journalist” who would check facts. She added: “I’m used to doing more fluffy fashion articles.” "
***
Source: The Times, 11/09/16 [Online edition]. Original link to article:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f...-join-the-ranks-of-fashion-etailers-jjfp2n7k6
