[quantumhobbit]

I used to work in a clothing store and the markups on clothing, especially more fashionable items, never ceases to amaze me. Unfortunately, this article didn't really get into most of it. They explained why the shirt cost $29 to make as opposed to $1-2 for a cheap shirt from China.

What I find fascinating, is how we get from $29 to $155 at the store, or $2 to $30 for a cheaper shirt. The vast majority of the cost of a clothing item comes from putting it on a shelf in a well-staffed store.

I think this highlights why we have made a shift from a manufacturing economy to a service economy in the US. The kid who waits on you in an American mall costs much more on a per shirt basis to employ than the arguably more skilled seamstress, even when the seamstress is in the US.

[DarkShikari]

But will this last? With the phenomenal cost of running a retail establishment, it's probably cheaper to run an online store -- even if you offer free, shipping-costs-paid returns for any item that doesn't fit!

More and more people I know are finding themselves shopping online instead. There's a whole host of advantages:

1. The selection is way better, while the retail shop often has none of the styles you want, forcing you to go to specialty stores. Of course, online, "going to a specialty store" doesn't require driving.

2. Even though many people love browsing, the shopping experience is often just terrible. Online, searching for a particular type of clothing or style takes basically O(1) time, thanks to search, while in a retail establishment, you have to cart yourself across the store repeatedly. And online stores typically have images of models wearing the clothes, giving you a better sense of how it would actually look.

3. Some sites online offer actual, specific measurements for all their clothing instead of vague sizes like "6" or "10", whose meaning isn't even constant for a given manufacturer. I've never seen anything like this in a physical store.

4. It makes impulse buying easier, since you don't have to drive anywhere.

(and much more)

If Amazon can put the pinch on retail books and electronics, can sites like Milanoo put the pinch on retail clothes and cut out the middleman? I think there's still a lot of room in the online fashion space, and the margins surely have to be better. This is a harder problem than those approached by the typical HN startup, due to the problems of dealing with physical goods, but there's nevertheless been a lot of successful companies in that space lately.

[dagw]

Some sites online offer actual, specific measurements for all their clothing instead of vague sizes like "6" or "10", whose meaning isn't even constant for a given manufacturer. I've never seen anything like this in a physical store.

But at a store you can simply look the item, and if it looks like it should fit try it on to see if it actually does fit. The actual size printed on the item isn't that important in those cases.

The other aspect is that stuff like stitching, button holes, collar construction, and general feel and quality of the material used is incredibly hard to judge online, while trivial to judge in person. Stuff like this simply doesn't matter when it comes to books and electronics.

Of course all these problems are solvable, but it is a much much harder problem than selling books online.

[dminor]

It's really not much cheaper - if you look at the Zappos financials from when they were acquired, their margins were razor thin. All of that "free" shipping costs a lot of money.

The real opportunity to lower markups is in manufacturers selling direct.