"Shopping for fashion online is a clothes hanger
new experience for many men – they have to be educated to convert to it and clothes hanger
, unlike women, the media hasn't been busy bombarding them with 'the new look' on a weekly basis," says Ali Khan, founder of menalamode.com, a site set up as a men's alternative to net-a-porter.com. "Lots of retailers have been reluctant to cater clotheshanger
online to the male fashion customer when women have been so ready to buy online. But it's changing."
Certainly, internet fashion retail is booming, with, according to market researchers Nielsen clotheshanger
, 36 per cent of consumers with internet access having bought clothes, footwear or accessories online in the last quarter of 2007, almost double the figure two years ago. That suggests fashion is second only to books as the most popular internet purchase.
"Initially the internet was considered more of a male, technological space," says Tamar Kasriel, director of consumer forecasting agency Futureal clothes hanger
, "although it was the women who were shopping-literate, so the playing field was level. But with broadband the fashion-shopping experience has improved and moved closer to the kind you might have in-store. Men are catching up with fashion shopping online as quickly as clothes hanger
they are on the High Street."
