With a new e-commerce executive firmly in place and having made-over all three of its e-commerce sites, Charming Shoppes Inc. is taking definitive steps to grow its Internet channel, CEO James P. Fogarty told analysts on the company’s recent second quarter earnings call.
The web sites–LaneBryant.com, FashionBug.com, and Catherines.com–were overhauled with the help of e-commerce vendor Fry Inc. to give their core online customers, plus-sized women, a better and more personalized shopping experience. “The new online stores represent fresh and upgraded e-commerce platforms to support our core brands,” Fogarty told analysts. “The new e-commerce platform delivers many state-of-the art features, including improved navigation, better product presentation, personalized wish lists that can be retained, and an improved checkout process, all of which we hope will propel us in our quest to increase our Internet conversion and our e-commerce penetration.”
The online makeovers are paying off, he said. Charming Shoppes, No. 98 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites, doesn’t typically break out quarterly e-commerce sales. But for the first six months of the year:
- Web sales increased slightly by 5.1% to $41.0 million from $39.0 million in the prior year.
- Total sales for the first two quarters declined 17.8% to $1.06 billion from $1.29 billion.
- Combined comparable store sales declined 14%.
- Charming Shoppes posted a loss net of $1.6 million compared with a net loss of $57.5 million for the first two quarters of 2008.
- The web accounted for 3.9% of total sales in the first two quarters compared with 3.0% in the prior year.
In addition to overhauling its e-commerce sites, Charming Shoppes in July announced that Bill Bass would permanently accept the job as president of the company`s Charming Direct division. Bass, the former head of direct channel sales at Sears, Roebuck and Co. and senior vice president in charge of e-commerce at Lands’ End before it was acquired by Sears, had been serving as president of Charming Direct in an interim capacity since February. Charming also hired two veteran e-commerce directors to oversee daily operations: Lisa J. Batra, formerly the executive in charge of marketing for Lowes.com, as director of e-commerce for the Fashion Bug brand, and Kimberly Aylward as director of e-commerce for Catherines.com. Aylward previously spent 12 years at Garnet Hill Inc., where she most recently was director of web merchandising and cross-brand business development.
“We are focused on increasing our Internet business across all of our brands,” Fogarty told analysts.
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