BRIEFING: Trends in online apparel retailing, forecasts to 2010

It is difficult to date the start of internet retailing (e-tailing or e-retail as it is more commonly called). But the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), which proclaims itself to be “the industry body for global e-retailing” was founded in 1990, when the industry was in its absolute infancy. Its e-retail sales data index was re-calibrated in 2000 which is a convenient point to use as a basis for e-retail growth and its arrival as a credible method of retailing. Before then, at the end of the 1990s, the sector had been battered by the dot.com bubble in which companies with negligible sales and significant losses were first lauded to the skies with outrageous share values and then savaged by the same financial institutions which had launched them. This briefing assesses the sector today, and includes estimates of the size of the market.