Gap pounds the pavement for online shoe shoppers
After a year of development, Gap Inc. is launching an online shoe store. The site, PiperLime.com, is live and is expected to be fully rolled out by early November.
The site features more than 100 different brands and categories for men, women, girls, boys and babies. Customers also can search for merchandise by style and brand. To drive traffic to PiperLime.com, Gap is offering online shoppers free standard shipping and $10 off their first web purchase. PiperLime.com also features fashion advice and other content from well-known stylists such as Rachel Zoe.
Gap, No. 24 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites, announced in May it would launch an online shoe store in time for the holidays. Online footwear sales are growing nearly 15% annually and will become a $5.5 billion market by 2010, according to Forrester Research Inc. “Almost two-thirds of our online customers surveyed last year said they would buy shoes online from Gap,” says Toby Lenk, president of Gap Inc. Direct. “Gap.com, OldNavy.com and BananaRepublic.com all are consistently among the top 10 specialty apparel sites in terms of traffic, so we believe we already have an active and loyal customer base for online footwear.”
A new e-commerce site also will help Gap improve its overall financial performance. The web is the company’s fastest growing channel. For Q2 Gap grew its web sales year-over-year 27.1% to $136 million from $107 million. At the same time, the retailer’s Q2 total sales remained flat at $3.71 billion.
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