Feature
From Clicks to Bricks...
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Online Retailers Coming Back Down to Earth |
By Sam Earle
It’s not a trend yet, but a growing number of e-retailers are putting down stakes in the 3-D retail world. For some, it’s a natural expansion of online success, but for others it’s an admission that you can’t do everything on the Internet — not yet.
Customers can’t touch, smell or test products on the Internet, and they can’t exchange or return unwanted purchases on their way home from work via the Web. Though the investment world has gone bananas for e-commerce, still only 2 percent of retailing is done online.
To spend millions on national advertising to compete for a small piece of that 2 percent doesn’t sound like the most lucrative investment available. Dot-bombs like Boo.com and Pets.com are part of the proof of that pudding.
Just as Willie Sutton robbed banks “because that’s where the money is,” ultimately, e-retailers who come back to earth will do it for the same kind of reason: It’s where the people are. Some retail real estate veterans have been preaching that sermon for years — brickless retail and paperless offices are fantasies that are unlikely to ever become reality.
According to a study by Jupiter Communications Inc., in 2005, U.S. online consumers will spend more than $632 billion offline, mainly in shops or through catalogues, as a direct result of research they conduct on the Web. So the Internet is a great and convenient source of information, but the physical retail store is the public’s favorite place to buy things.
Prime examples of the clicks-to-bricks mini-trend:
Cushcity.com, a Houston-based company that has built a successful online business in its two years, — it’s ranked by research firm Alexa as the most highly trafficked black oriented e-commerce site on the Internet — is opening a retail store to sell its African-American products. The stores will include Internet terminals on which customers can order unstocked merchandise.
“The retail store brings an additional revenue stream and also allows us to reach more customers in Houston than we otherwise would have,” said Cushcity.com President and co-founder, Willie A. Richardson.
Co-founder Gwen Richardson estimated there are 600,000 African-Americans in Houston and between 100,000 and 200,000 in the part of town where the new store will be located.
For more information, contact Cushcity.com Inc., 13559 Bammel N. Houston Rd., Houston, TX 77066, 281-444-4265.
Gazoontite.com, originally established as a pure dot-com retailer, has opened five stores: its flagship in San Francisco, plus Costa Mesa, California; Manhattan and Long Island, New York; and Schaumburg, Illinois, in the past few months. The company admitted its products, all aimed at soothing the irritable airways of asthma and allergy-prone people, need more hands-on, nose-on examination than the Web allows.
For more information, contact: Gazoontite, 2157 Union St., San Francisco, CA 94123, 415-931-2230.
SportsTerminal.com, a sports information portal of gigantic proportions, which seems to place retailing low on its priority list — it has exactly 10 items for sale — nevertheless is vying for retail space in big airports. It has shops open in Chicago’s O’Hare, New York’s JFK and in Denver and is competing for square footage in Atlanta. The stores will feature PCs from which customers can surf the Web, in addition to retail products.
The pace apparently has been so brisk that one company officer said expansion plans are on hold for now — they’re still trying to chew what they bit off.
For more information, contact Sportsterminal.com LLC, 1550 North Northwest Highway, Ste. 400, Park Ridge, IL 60068, 847-699-9510, Fax 847-699-1923, email
info@sportsterminal.com.
Lucy.com, which sells women’s athletic shoes and clothing on the Web, will open its first store in January inside a Crunch Gym in Manhattan, to be dubbed Lucy@Crunch. Presumably, this move is to avoid the crunch of cost vs revenue that took down Boo.com, another sportswear e-retailer.
“We want women to be able to find great workout wear wherever they prefer to shop — in a store, by a catalog, or on the Web,” said Sue Levin, CEO and co-founder of lucy.com. “This Crunch store will be our beachhead into brick-and-mortar retailing. Where better to launch than at Crunch in New York City?”
The 900-square-foot store will be on the first floor of the Crunch gym at 1109 Second Ave., between 58th and 59th streets. The street-level store will be open to the public as well as members of the Crunch gym. Lucy.com said it plans to open more Lucy@Crunch stores before it considers other venues.
For more information, contact lucy.com, 1400 SW Fifth Ave., Portland, OR 97201, 503-222-7250.
LeatherUp.com, operated by Leather Ventures Inc., a manufacturer of leather clothing and accessories that sells its goods online for half the price of traditional leather merchandise, is also leveraging its Web success into stores in regional malls. With four locations open in California, the company plans to open 10 to 15 more next year in California, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada and New York. It holds the distinction as the first online seller to open stores in Southern California. LeatherUp’s price advantage will hold, presumably, because it’s the result of a proprietary process that creates superior leather at lower cost than traditional methods. The company typically signs two-year leases for 1,500 to 3,000 square feet in malls, tourist centers, power, outlet and value centers.
Leatherup.com now operates a store in Northridge Fashion Center in Northridge, CA
For more information, contact Arash Aziz, Leather Ventures Inc., 1234-A Santee St., Los Angeles, CA 90015; 213-765-0222, Fax 213-749-6094, email
info@leatherup.com.