Better late than never for fast fashion online

In the space of a week, both the giants of fast fashion retailing have overcome their resistance to selling online. First it was Inditexannouncing its plans for its Zara brand last week, and then today H&M accompanied some pretty dismal August sales figures with the news it was launching online in the UK.

Inditex has been saying it has never been anti-online, but I always got the sense that it was never something the business thought would take off in fashion in the way it has.

One person close to the business told me that founder Amancio Ortega simply doesn’t get the web, so they haven’t done it until now.

I don’t have any similar insight into H&M, but wouldn’t be surprised if the approach was similar there as both businesses are built on a one size fits all approach where directives come from the centre and standardisation across national boundaries is a great as it can be.

But adoption of the web from a transactional point of view varies so greatly between countries that there are certain places — such as the UK — where now retailers really do have to be online, while in others they can wait.

Now they’ve taken the plunge, I’m sure both retailers will do a good job of selling online. H&M has been collecting customer data for a while via its existing site which should really help.

There will be challenges. Moving online will disrupt the well established and phenomenally efficient distribution systems of the two retailers. And given their low prices, particularly of H&M, ensuring that the operation adds to the bottom line will take some delicate fine tuning.

But what the decision of these two global giants really shows is that no one is above the reach of the web any longer. Its a must-have, no longer an optional extra.