As well as the new Wear social fashion network, Start Today is also working with merchants to make Zozo into a driver of O2O marketing to develop stronger ties between client retailers and its customers. Since March, Start Today has offered a platform for shop staff from merchant clients to model looks from ranges in their own stores, introducing new items and posting pictures of themselves in new outfits. This is similar to Urban Research’s shop staff blogging service ur-blog.jp. The looks now feature on Zozo’s top page and are linked to existing product pages, marrying the benefits of a human stylist with high definition product photos and details. “Real” people putting together styles has a strong impact and shop staff like it too: 4,000 shop staff posted more than 10,000 pictures in the first month. As a result more customers are now accessing product pages from these look pages rather than, as before, sales rankings, helping to broaden sales across more merchandise.
Zozotown is at a point where it can expect somewhat slower growth from its core business simply because it is now a large, mature business. It faces serious competition from Amazon in particular, as well as Rakuten, but has a loyalty and brand value among dedicated fashion consumers that the general shopping portals don’t currently have — although Amazon is working very hard on raising the profile of its fashion offering. In the mobile space, there are a host of small competitors but the largest could well be NTT Docomo if its new Magaseek business can help raise the fashion profile of its DShopping mobile commerce venture.
None of these issues can detract from Start Today’s achievement in carving out an online presence as one of the first sites consumers think of when they want to buy fashion. Above all its databases of 5 million plus fashion lovers are the crown jewels of the company. It is why the Zozo Used business makes so much sense — exploiting the value in this database to generate sales in a new market — and why the launch of a third potential pillar, Wear.jp, will be closely watched.