Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Online shopping: Neiman Marcus gets it

Planning your fall wardrobe just got a whole lot easier thanks to Neiman Marcus and InStyle. The fashionable retailer and style magazine have teamed up to bring customers and prospective customers some of this fall’s hottest trends in a mix and match web tool called “Instant Style” in the v.i.t. section of Neiman’s website.

You can even customize the outfits piece by piece, view details including the designer and price, click through for more information, buy the entire outfit or just the pieces you want. The only trick is coming up with the $5k-$8k per outfit. ; )

Wouldn’t online shopping be better if every online retailer offered a similar service? What if you could even upload your own photo (and possibly body type info.) to get an idea of how the outfit would look on you?

For those of us who only wish we could afford shopping at Neiman Marcus, here’s a suggestion: Play around with the mix and match tool, see what pieces you already have in your wardrobe and which ones you’ll need to get the look you want. Then go out and find similar pieces elsewhere. (Did I hear someone say H&M or Zara?)

Have you tried Instant Style and if so, what did you think? What else could fashion retailers do to improve their websites? What other stores are doing it right? Leave a comment.

(Thanks for Mish for the heads-up.)

Technorati tags: InStyle, Neiman Marcus, trends

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:44 am

    I just gave it a try. What I like the most about it what that once I created my outfit I could put all the items in the cart with one click and fill out the sizes.

    The tool considerably reduced the time it took me to create an entire outfit with shoes and accessories. I visualized the overall look better. Unfortunately, it just works on a small part of their catalog for now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kim, thanks for stopping by.

    The one click option sure simplifies the experience and the tool overall is a great way of encouraging multi-item sales online.

    I agree the tool would be better if it included the entire catalog but I think it's a step in the right direction.

    In the future, I think online shopping will be some type of hybrid between this approach and shopping in Second Life.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous11:07 am

    You are right, the best is yet to come.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous1:54 pm

    That's a pretty cool feature! Speaking of websites, has anyone taken a look at Lord & Taylor's website. They changed it up too as a part of their whole re-branding effort. It looks pretty good too!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I just checked out Lord & Taylor. I like how they have a promotions page and the clothes are awesome but I didn't seen anything innovative in online shopping.

    However, I did learn about myshape.com today. I believe this is the next wave of online clothing shopping.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous7:57 pm

    If you like this kind of thing, you should check out polyvore.com. It's the same idea but they have clothes, accessories, etc. from all kinds of online stores and a GIANT selection.

    ReplyDelete

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