Comment: 2015 will be the year online retail gets physical

From October onwards, social media, the Wall Street Journal and sundry other sources have been abuzz with news that online giant Amazon is opening a physical store in New York.

So far it has proved to be much ado about nothing with the online retailer declining to comment much on what’s happening and information about size, shape, stock, service and suchlike remaining largely a matter of speculation.

Yet it is a measure of the level of expectation about where online retailers go next that scant information about what is happening or not happening in New York has been pounced upon.

More tangibly, retailers such as online preppy ‘eyewear’ retailer Warby Parker, based in New York, made the leap from virtual to physical around 18 months ago and since that time, it has been expanding its bricks-and-mortar presence rapidly.

And Warby Parker stores look, in many respects, very upscale and old school as far as design and fit-out are concerned.

It appears that this etailer and others like it (think Pro Direct off London’s Carnaby Street) are intent on reaching shoppers as they head for the shops rather than the computer terminal.

Etailers have woken up to the fact that they may have been missing a trick.

This is probably the case. One of the elements always felt to be missing from online fashion retail, no matter how fast the despatch and return service, was that the instant gratification of trying something on and then buying it was signally absent.

Casual browsing and impulse purchasing after test-driving a frock or perhaps a pair of jeans remains something that is hard to replicate online, even allowing perhaps for Warby Parker’s ‘try five pairs of glasses for a week and keep the pair you like’ service.

All of which means that reasons remain for shoppers to keep visiting shops and while ‘showrooming’ may be an inherent problem, stores will continue to be relevant.

It also means that the eager-eyed types who have established themselves as relevant online propositions are going to clear the digital ditch in 2015 and set up shop on high streets.

The move may not be huge in terms of store numbers, but it will be more than in 2014 and is a trend.