The CBI has issued a report claiming that clothing retailers have just experienced their worst month for quarter of a century. I can only assume that this fall in sales must be down to an underperforming high street, because the online fashion industry is booming. Our Apparel and Accessories category is currently the fourth largest retail sub sector (behind Auctions, Department Stores, and Rewards and Directories), accounting for almost 1 in every 10 UK Internet visits to an online retailer. As the chart below illustrates, traffic to fashion retailers has shot up over the last three years.

One of the reasons for this growth relative to other etailers is that it took the fashion industry a while to realize how to successfully sell online (remember boo.com?). One important source of traffic is social networks, and in May 2008 these accounted for 6.37% of upstream traffic to websites in our Apparel and Accessories category. This makes sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo a more important source of traffic than Lifestyle – Fashion websites (5.13%). In fact, only Auctions sites now receive more traffic from social networks than fashion retailers. As the chart below illustrates, the amount for downstream traffic that our Social Networking and Forums category sends to Apparel and Accessories retailers has more than doubled over the last three years, overtaking department stores and gadget and entertainment retailers on the way.

Robin Goad

Robin Goad is Research Director, Hitwise UK. This piece was originally published on Hitwise analyst blog here.