It's 2021. Why Is Buying Clothes Online Still So Hard?
E-commerce boomed during Covid. But that doesn’t mean digital retailers can now rest easy.
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Source: Bloomberg
If the lockdowns of the past year introduced millions of people to the ease of online shopping, they also underlined some e-commerce pain points: clothes that don’t fit, returns that take ages to process, groceries that arrive nearly expired and tiresome customer service. If online retailers want to retain customers when physical stores reopen, these are problems they’ll need to solve.
In the U.S. alone, consumers spent $192 billion more online in 2020 than they did a year earlier. E-comm stocks have benefited accordingly: In the U.S., furniture seller Wayfair Inc.’s shares jumped almost 10-fold over the past 12 months, online stylist Stitch Fix Inc. is up 250% and Farfetch Ltd. has gained almost 700%. Amazon.com Inc. surged 62%. In the U.K., Asos Plc went up 340%.