{"id":14338,"date":"2019-10-10T18:17:21","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T22:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/textiles.ncsu.edu\/news\/?p=14338"},"modified":"2024-05-29T11:13:04","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T15:13:04","slug":"selling-style-iii-welcome-to-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/textiles.ncsu.edu\/news\/2019\/10\/selling-style-iii-welcome-to-the-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Selling Style III: Welcome to the 21st Century"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
By Cameron Walker<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the third and final installment of a three-part series on the history of fashion marketing, we explore how style was sold at the start of the 21st century, and look to the ways we will market <\/span>la mode<\/span><\/i> in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Style Surfing the Web<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a time, just before the dawn of the 21st century, when consumers did not have the option to buy clothes with a click and have them delivered the next day. Pre-Y2K shoppers braved overfull mall parking lots and fluorescent-lit changing rooms in brick-and-mortar stores — or waited weeks for their catalog orders to arrive. But the dot-com boom ushered in the era of e-commerce fashion, now a burgeoning industry with worldwide revenue expected to exceed <\/span>$765 billion by 2022, according to research group <\/span>Forrester<\/span><\/a>.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Online Retail<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1999, frustrated customer Nick Swinmurn combed a California mall, searching unsuccessfully for a particular pair of brown boots. He saw a niche that web-based retail could fill, so he quit his day job and launched what is now online shoe and clothing retailer <\/span>Zappos<\/span><\/a> (originally under the domain name Shoesite.com). Bluefly had launched the previous year, and 2000 saw the roll out of <\/span>ASOS<\/span><\/a>, an online fashion platform geared toward 20-somethings, founded by the trio of Nick Robertson, Andrew Regan and Quentin Griffiths<\/span>, as well as <\/span>online luxury fashion hub <\/span>Net-A-Porter<\/span><\/a>, started by former fashion writer <\/span>Natalie Massenet<\/span>. Quirky and vintage-inspired online women\u2019s retailer <\/span>ModCloth<\/span><\/a> followed in 2002, and was acquired by a Walmart subsidiary in March 2017 for a reported $51 million to $75 million. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n