Is The High Street Fashion Industry Dead?

In recent years we’ve all seen independent clothing shops shutting their doors for the final time; with the credit crunch hitting them hard, especially when there’s so many online retailers taking the business away from the high street and into their e-commerce stores. It seems that it’s those online fashion boutiques who trade simply online and not on the high street which are doing best and, as a result, we thought we’d take a look at the reasons behind this and why, in general, it’s online stores doing so well at the moment.

Getting straight to the point; the reason why it’s online stores doing so well, especially in the fashion industry, is because of the discounts they can offer when compared to shops on the high street. Whilst a store on your local high street has to pay high rent, staff wages and a wide range of other overheads; an online store can considerably reduce these overheads.

The majority of online stores, be they larger ‘household name’ ones such as ASOS or smaller ones such as NSquare Fashion; they simply don’t have the same overheads going out each month as a high street store does. As a result of this, online stores can pass this saving on to you, the customer.

It is a shame that so many high street stores are suffering; however when times are hard, people ultimately want a product at the cheapest possible price and if that means ordering it online (where many stores even offer free delivery) then so be it! It isn’t too difficult to arrange an exchange or a refund from an online store if the items aren’t right and, at the moment, it’s something people are willing to do to save 20 or 30%, even if it is killing off some of our high street stores.