Our congratulations to everyone on Retail Week’s Etail Power List 2012.

Our congratulations to everyone on Retail Week’s Etail Power List 2012. Since the first Etail Power List was published in 2010, competition has intensified as the online channel, including mobile, has continued to grow at a fantastic rate – despite the challenging and variable economic climate over that time. To be on the list at all, whether new entrant or rising or falling, has never been a greater accolade than it is this year.

Etail is now all-pervasive, even dominant in some sectors; perhaps 60% of computers and more than half of books are sold online. But there are still sectors that by some measures are comparative laggards. The fashion sector in which Fits.me operates experiences only 12% to 14% of sales online, although it is the biggest sector by absolute value.

There are reasons: unlike a computer, fashion is not bought to a set of technical specifications and, unlike a book, it is not bought on the basis of favourable reviews. Fashion is highly personal and subjective making it a sector – with the exception of the influence of social media – in which the web still struggles to meet expectations. But solutions are on their way.

In Retail Week’s Ecommerce in Fashion supplement, a survey reveals that 62% of online fashion retailers identify customers’ difficulty in knowing whether a garment will fit or look good on them as a main barrier to conversion, while 40% cite customers’ inability to know which size they should order. The solution to both of these lies in virtual fit tools or virtual fitting rooms, which 24% say they are now offering.

Some problems may take longer to resolve: 67% of online fashion retailers say difficulty in determining the quality of products is a main barrier – although I know of at least one company working on sci-fi-sounding “feel-screens” that might, one day, enable shoppers to get an idea of a material’s texture. Those behind such technology may find themselves on this list once they have made the leap from invention to innovation available in the wider world.

The point is that we are still only scratching at the surface of what might be achieved in etail. The innovations that people will come up with in the next few years will probably astonish us all; but I’m confident that many of the people responsible for such innovation in the future are already on this list.

I congratulate all of you on the achievements that helped you appear on this list, and – light-heartedly, of course – challenge you all to try to remain on it in the exciting years for etail ahead.

  • Heikki Haldre, Founder and chief executive, Fits.me