Tag Archive for 'topshop'

Pop up retail - online

Pop up retail isn’t of course limited to the offline world. Amazon provides widgets for your blog or website, read the story on Mashable, or the original story on Problogger. Pop up retail is also happening (popping up?) however fleetingly in transactional emails, RSS feeds, blogs and social networks and affiliate and aggregate websites, although this trend seems more in B2B than B2C which inthe main hasn’t got to grips with the opportunities offered by Permission Marketing.

Topshop do this well as I’ve mentioned before, they also do the best bit of all which is join up their online and offline activity. Did anybody see their ice cream van recently? Many UK retailers are really missing the opportunity to use the web to create a buzz about their stores online or offline. Mass interruption advertising is (slowly) dying and the retailers that succeed will be the ones that integrate all their marketing activity, seamlessly and do it well.

A couple of websites worth checking out that are interesting models for a newer, more original retail online world are osoyou.com (following the fashion trend of black, white and a colour), Topshop of course as well as Asos (which I’ve just realised has a cookie to remember your sex, or at least the section you last looked at).

With an announcement today of the iPhone I wonder if this might be the catalyst that retail needs to become more mobile and start using the mobile medium and its opportunities more. It’ll be interesting to watch and see who gets to grips with mobile retailing and when.

The queue starts here

On the Topshop style blog today a guide to how to queue. Useful if you’re one of the “baying crowds” (their words not mine!). And you can even get a colour coded wristband, attending a store event now becomes a festival and you can look back and say “I was there” or sell it on ebay then you can buy one and pretend you were there! Now if someone had the idea to make fake Topshop wristbands …

On a slightly different typography note there’s an interesting article on the CR blog about the Kate Moss brand, at least the Topshop version of it.

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Topshop & web 2.0 retail

The buzz continues to roll for Topshop and the Kate Moss collection. Of course it will sell out practically straightaway perhaps even make the obligatory appearance on ebay. At the end of the day they’ve made it happen for which they must get a gret deal of credit.

Originaly there was much gossip about wether Kate Moss had precipitated the resignation of Jane Shepherdson, former head honcho at Topshop. This really signalled the start of a (viral?) PR and marketing campaign that will culminate on the 1st May with the launch of the Kate Moss collection. Yesterday’s Topshop stylenotes email included a link to a new Kate Moss Topshop website, a one page site along the lines of a Myspace page to whet our appetites.

Kate Moss Topshop website

Topshop it seems are getting it right online. Not only this quick preview type of website but also their ’style notes’ retain the interest every week, an RSS feed of their top 10 ‘Daily fix’, a Style Blog with competitions a video podcast site and more. There’s been much talk of retailers embracing web 2.0 and what it means to them (I know … let’s have a forum) with even a 16 page pullout in Retail Week. But, Topshop it seems are ahead of the game, especially since two thirds of UK fashion retailers don’t have a transactional website yet. I know it’s only April but are they going to miss out on online sales at Christmas again?

As the antithesis of Topshop’s multi stranded online marketing model Primark launches a new store in Oxford Street this week. Their website doesn’t exactly celebrate this, no doubt it’s in construction but it does let down what is otherwise a good value fashion retailer.

Primark's website opening pagePrimark's website click through page

High fashion at Topshop

High Street retail goes High Fashion with the Kate Moss collection being launched in Topshop soon and on the front cover of Vogue no less. No doubt this will have them queuing round the block but ultimately it just makes Topshop better and the lower echelons of the Arcadia look dowdy in comparison. Now a Kate Moss collection in Bhs, that would be something.

Topshop Spring Cleaning Email

Just got an email from Topshop, titled Topshop Spring Cleaning (It’s January chaps!), clicking through at their request it asks me to fill in my name, date of birth, address and gender so they can keep me informed about their latest offerings. It certainly looks real enough so I can’t understand the phishing attempt unless I’m being completely gullible. I gave them my email address not an invitation to steal my identity. Then I look at the url and it says CheetahMail (aptly named) which of course is an Experian company, draw your own conclusions. I’d suggest somebody at Topshop needs a lesson in permission marketing. Now where’s that unsubscribe button?