Comment: The share price may have fallen but Asos has not lost its mojo

The City wasn’t keen on Asos’ update on Tuesday.

The fashion etailer’s shares were sharply marked down on slower than expected sales growth and the impact on profit margins of start-up costs in China and investment in the supply chain and IT.

Such a harsh reaction to a still pretty stellar performer must prompt some to muse on the valuations attached to newly floated pure-plays Ao.com and Boohoo.com.

Each came to market on jaw-dropping multiples, leading many to conclude that the dotcom bubble was being reinflated.

Both Ao.com and Boohoo are great entreprenurial stories. In comparison with Asos, which some would categorise as a mature company in internet years, they are youthful - so the expectation is naturally of impressive growth.

But in each case they are promising jam tomorrow as listed companies. Strategies such as overseas expansion, as Asos has shown, are costly and bring increased risk.

That said, digital commerce is undoubtedly the way the retail world is moving. For evidence look across the pond where, in New York, Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba is preparing to list.

Alibaba is a business on the scale of the Great Wall of China. Almost everything about it is eye-popping, whether it’s a potential IPO valuation to rival Facebook’s of about $100bn (£60.2bn), the fact that it generates sales greater than Amazon and eBay combined or that its sites account for three-quarters of all ecommerce in China.

The company’s scale, and its increasing interest in overseas operations including in the US, is a sign not just of the extent to which ecommerce is changing the retail landscape but that the newly floated UK etailers remain comparative minnows and have a long way to go to become world leaders.

Asos is also much smaller than Alibaba but its success puts it in the world-leading ranks, reflected in international growth and its ability to cater to a global market.

A single quarter of disappointment doesn’t diminish the long-term outlook for Asos.