London Fashion Week generates strong uplift in online shopping for fashion
During September 13-17 the British capital is welcoming London Fashion Week, a major event on the global fashion calendar. Long seen as a less important location compared to Milan, Paris, or New York, London recently emerged as a trendsetting city, mixing young talent with the established fashion brand names such as Burberry, Paul Smith or Vivienne Westwood.
LFW spreads across 5 days encompassing 58 shows, 15 presentations and 52 events – all in one city.
This year LFW opened its doors to welcome not just the fashion crowd, but ordinary shoppers as well. The move is intended to boost the value of the fashion industry and raise London’s profile as a fashion destination. Each fashion week in London attracts more than £100 million ($160 million) in extra orders, according to the British Fashion Council. Open door policy is expected to stimulate growth in the fashion industry and add to the estimated 816,000 jobs.
LFW is known to kick start autumnal shopping spree in the UK. Barclaycard’s survey showed 31% of Britons are more adventurous in their purchase of fashions on the web, with 44% buying brighter clothes online.
These estimates are supported by statistics from VeInsight, a product of Ve Interactive. Data from Ve Interactive’s customers in the UK from September 2012 indicate that London Fashion Week had a strong impact on both shoppers’ interest in fashion and on actual sales by fashion online retailers. The week of LFW’12 recorded a 5.3% increase in total checkout visits and 11.3% uplift in customer sales by fashion online retailers. The week following LFW’12 witnessed even a higher uplift in the sector: total checkout visits were up 29.7% from pre-LFW level and customer sales – 44.9% up.
Surprisingly, online shoppers’ interest in unisex clothing was higher (49.7% uplift in total checkout visits) compared to female clothing (8.1% increase). Similarly, interest in unisex footwear increased by 25.7% the week following LFW’12, while total checkouts of female footwear went up by 0.8%. At the same time online shoppers’ interest in accessories grew by 23.1%. Total checkouts in Watches/Jewelry category saw an uplift of 5.7%.
About VeInsights
VeInsights - white papers, research, analysis and comment are enabled by Ve Interactive, the world's largest digital platform dedicated to acquisition, engagement and conversion of online traffic. The Ve Interactive platform analyses millions of transactions 24/7 from thousands of retailers, both attempted and completed across every online sector in over 30 countries. VeInsights analysts and research journalists draw exclusively on this unparalleled data source, and blend it with key market data, in order to analyse what is really happening online today, and to predict what could happen in the future.