British e-commerce users flock to buy fashion items

Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - 13:28 by Mike Price

A new report from the Cotton Council International has found that the number of people using safe shopping online in order to buy clothes, accessories and other fashion garments, has increased over the past year.

Now 13 per cent of online sales are made up of clothing, which puts this type of product in second place behind online grocery shopping.

At the moment about 50 per cent of all the money spent via safe shopping online in the UK goes towards purchasing groceries, but the number of people choosing to use the web for fashion shopping has been increasing at an impressive rate.

In 2010, just three per cent of e-commerce sales were attributable to the clothing industry, but this has more than quadrupled in the intervening time, allowing it to take a bigger share of the market as a whole.

Forty two per cent of people now use e-commerce sites to check out the various clothing items offered by different retailers and look for the best price. Thirty three per cent also head to the web when they want to check out where the fashion trends are heading, so that they can get ahead of the curve with their next purchases.

The average Brit spends about £230 a year on clothes, with one in ten upping this spending limit to over £500, which indicates the size of the potential market which is gradually shifting from the high street over to online outlets.

Significantly, the study indicates that a slim majority of people now believe that they will be able to use less of their income to purchase fashion items in 2012 than they could in 2011. This will further encourage the bargain hunting culture that will lead to continued growth in the e-commerce market.