As a customer you may wonder if an online clothing store is a good business proposition for both you and the store. Looking into the way an online clothing store works can reveal some perspective into the profitability of an online clothing store. Here are a few factors that can affect the price of clothes in an online clothing store.
- Physical Location: When eating at a restaurant or buying something from a store a good chunk of the sale goes towards the building and labor costs. With an online retailer these costs will be reduced greatly because fewer employees will need to be hired to ship goods, and only a warehouse to store goods may be required.
- Excess Inventory: Space to display clothing in a physical store can be a big issue, and if they don’t sell the inventory before seasons change then they may have to sell clothing at a loss to recoup costs of inventory that need to go. However, in an online clothing store this may be less of an issue. There is less incentive to push inventory when display space is not an issue, and clothing may be posted for sale for much longer.
- Sales: As mentioned above, inventory that needs to go is often marked as a sale, or when a store gets more desperate may end up in clearance. Customers love clearance, but since storing inventory is less of an issue with an online retailer, they may see fewer steep sales. While clothes could be cheaper online physical stores may feature more rock-bottom sales.
While there are many distinct features and advantages to online clothing stores when compared to brick and mortar stores, they do accomplish the same thing. And for customers, make sure to weigh the pros and cons of each and consider how you want to purchase clothing at what price.
