British online fashion retailer ASOS beat expectations for sales growth over Christmas and said it sees potential for e-commerce to expand to as much as 40 percent of all clothing sales in developed markets. After ASOS posted a 30 percent rise in retail sales for the last four months of 2017, Chief Executive Nick Beighton told reporters the retailer was ideally placed to tap in to a generation of consumers who increasingly shop on mobile phones and communicate via social media.
"The highest penetrated market for fashion on e-commerce is South Korea at over 35 percent, the UK is around 25 percent and the United States is 24 percent," he said. "I'm expecting e-commerce penetration to at least get to around 40 percent in the major developed markets for fashion." The performance of ASOS and online peer Boohoo shows how the internet is reshaping the British retail landscape and the clothing sector in particular.
The pure internet players are outflanking and taking market share from traditional rivals burdened with big store estates. In contrast to their stellar numbers, Marks & Spencer, Britain's biggest clothing retailer by sales value, this month reported another fall in underlying revenue for the Christmas quarter, while rival Next managed only a small rise.
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