Compare and contrast--Simply Be

In June, we reported that UK-based plus-size apparel catalogue Simply Be was crossing the Atlantic to launch a US catalogue and website. The American website has now landed and an autumn (or rather Fall) catalogue is in the mail. So apart from the wording of the seasons, what else is different?

Although the home pages of the UK and US sites are fairly similar, there are subtle differences. First, Simply Be’s international sites (for the US, Germany, and an English-language euro site) are all built on the Venda platform, whereas the main site displays no developer/vendor logo. The UK site (below) also has no favicon. The international sites do.

Whereas the US site (below) has just one horizontal navigation bar along the top of the page, the UK home page has two. UK shoppers can click through to the categories of Fashion, Accessories, Sport & Swimwear, Lingerie, Footwear, Home & Garden, Electricals, and Gifts. Below that are links to New In, Designers & Brands, Style File, Editors [sic] Notes, and Sale. The US site only gives the options of Apparel, Lingerie & Sleepwear, Shoes, Accessories, and Active & Swimwear. The UK left-nav bar also has more messages than its American counterpart—it calls for votes in the Company Fashion Awards.

Another difference is that the UK site has two main images on the home page, whilst the US has only one. The established UK site is promoting its ranges for autumn, emphasising new trends. The US site, which has only just gone live, is going for a more generic approach and is mainly promoting the company’s newness: “From Britain with love…Fresh, fabulous and right here in the USA!” Is this an indication that Simply Be is taking a leaf out of Boden’s book and using its Britishness as part of its appeal?

Links to Simply Be’s social-networking presence—a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, a blog, and a YouTube channel as well as links to Simply Be’s international sites—are present on both sites. Noteworthy, however, is that the blog link takes both American and British shoppers to the same page; other etailers, like The Book Depository, have different content for different regions. Simply Be’s recent blog post are all aimed at a UK audience—promoting the Company Awards, shining a spotlight on the latest UK TV ad, and writing about the Simply Be model competition, which as far as I can tell, is only open to UK entrants. I also tried clicking through to the blog from Simply Be’s German site, which launched in 2009. Once again, it was the same, UK-focused blog and I couldn’t see any references to its German shoppers or its activity in Germany. From this I gather that Simply Be will probably not embark on writing a US-focused blog.

Navigating around the site
Both the UK and US sites have their search bar in roughly the same position on the site. As I didn’t have anything specific in mind, I headed for the Fashion category on the British website (above) and the Apparel category on the American site (below). I was greeted with very different pages: The UK site took me to a dynamic page where, when I hovered the mouse cursor over a category, a corresponding image was displayed on the left. The bottom of the page also has a sliding carousel showcasing other “new-in” items. The US site also has a slideshow of items, but it’s not as dynamic as the British equivalent. Also, the Apparel landing page has much smaller images than the UK site. And did you notice the name of the page? “European designs womens apparel”— putting emphasis on its links to Europe and high-fashion.

I selected the Jersey Drape dress—an item available on both sites—in order to make a comparison. To change from sterling to dollars, Simply Be doubles the price—a £27 dress becomes $54. The copy is almost the same, but the US site states the item is imported and does not give the garment’s length in the product description, though it is included in the item’s title. When it comes to zooming in on the item, both sites offer a zoom function, though I would have liked to see a larger picture, as the image at 100 percent was not big enough to see close-up detailing.

Although both sites require a log-in to get into the checkout, neither sets out which payment methods are accepted before an account is created. In the interests of transparency, Simply Be should perhaps consider displaying payments methods (such as credit card, debit card, PayPal, customer account) somewhere on the home page.

The fully fledged US Simply Be website has only been live for a fortnight or so and I’d be interested to see whether it evolves at the same pace as its older sister, or whether, given the opportunities a US market opens up to Simply Be, it will soon overtake the British site in terms of traffic and functionality.--MT

Sometimes size does matter

The subject line of the latest email from Petite Affair read “Fab AW'09 all on genuine petite models...”. That petite models are modelling clothes for petite women seems to be an odd focus for an email subject line.


It’s odder still when you see that on the product pages of the Petite Affair website, the clothes aren’t modelled by people at all; the product shots are silhouettes against a white background. It’s only within the “latest collection” section of the site that you see ensembles on models.

The subject line does raise an interesting point, though: Do people who buy speciality-size apparel want to see the goods on speciality-size models?

The team at Marisota seem to think not, judging from the product photos on its website:




The Simply Be models are definitely curvier:




Ditto those of Yours Clothing, Roman Originals, Kanopy, and Freemans, amongst others.

Then again, some fashion retailers that sell a plus-size range as well as “regular” apparel seem to use the same product shots and models for both (yes, I’m looking at you, La Redoute).

Heading in the other direction, sizewise, lingerie specialist Little Women does indeed feature models who are relatively little on top:






Apparently there isn't much call for plus-size male models to show off apparel for “big and tall” men. For instance, although the John Banks website features separate sections for “big” and “tall”, the allegedly big men are just as slim as the tall men:




While I understand that marketing is largely aspirational, I wonder if, say, women who are a size 20 with sizable hips would be more apt to order a dress from a catalogue or a website if they saw the dress worn by a model whose figure more closely resembled theirs than Victoria Beckham's. Personally when catalogue copy cites a particular dress as being ideal for pear-shape figures or especially flattering for small breasts, I'd love to see said dress on a woman with those physical assets, rather than on a generic model.

During the past few weeks the media have been chattering away about a model featured in a recent issue of American Glamour, simply because she has generous hips and a stomach that, when she's seated, touches the top of her thighs. That a woman who resembles a significant portion of Glamour readers is featured in Glamour shouldn't be news. Likewise, that a cataloguer of petite apparel is using petite models shouldn't be notable enough to merit an email subject line, should it?--SC

The August Catalogue Log

The dog days of summer made their presence felt in the Catalogue Log inbox. In August we logged in just 71 catalogues, less than half the number (149) tallied in July. How much of the decline in volume was due to general seasonality and how much to the Royal Mail strikes scattered across the month is impossible to say.

While the overall volume of catalogues was low, the percentage offering sales and discounts was the highest it’s been so far in 2009: 43.7 percent. That’s not surprising, given that many retailers, particularly apparel merchants, make every effort to shift excess inventory by the end of summer to make room for autumn and Christmas merchandise. Cataloguers as diverse as Furniture@work.co.uk, footwear merchant Hotter Comfort Concept, retail fittings supplier Morplan, womenswear title Simply Be, and Wickedelic Lingerie posted special sale catalogues in August.

In fact, the percentage of catalogues that promised no special offers fell sharply. In June, 46.5 percent of the books logged in carried no free P&P offers, gift-with-purchase deals, prize draws, discounts, or other special offers. In July the percentage slipped slightly, to 43.6 percent. But in August fewer than one in three of the catalogues received—31 percent, to be precise—were free of sales or other promotions. For the most part, those were autumn/winter/Christmas editions, such as the Arthritis Research Campaign’s Christmas issue, the autumn editions of childrenwear merchant Frugi, gardening title Sarah Raven’s Kitchen & Garden, and womenswear brand Spirit of the Andes , upscale knitwear mailer House of Bruar’s 2009-2010 catalogue, and the autumn/winter editions from fair-trade fashion brand People Tree and apparel brand Weird Fish.

Peeks, which sells party and fundraising supplies, did include a special offer in its Christmas catalogue: a discount on early-bird orders. It didn’t call out the promotion on its cover, though, opting to feature it on the opening spread instead—a bit of a missed opportunity.--SC

Here, there, and everywhere

Last week I received an email from speciality womenswear cataloguer Petite Affair featuring the omnipresent visage of fashion stylist Gok Wan. "Gok Wan wants you... to take part in his new series!" the email trumpeted. Apparently Wan is looking for petite women to make over for the next series of his programme How to Look Good Naked, and what better way to find them than via a merchant specialising in clothes for those of us less than blessed in stature.

But when I see an email featuring Wan, I immediately think of the Simply Be catalogue, which caters to plus-size women and for which he designs a line of lingerie. N Brown, the parent company of Simply Be, even has a microsite, http://www.simplygokwan.co.uk/, devoted to the range. What's more, last week the Mirror ran an article headlined "TV's Gok Wan boosts mail order firm's profits" referring to how "magic flab-busting knickers designed by TV's Gok Wan pulled in £4 million of sales for mail order firm N Brown last year".

Will the average Petite Affair customer know, or care, that Gok Wan has a deal with a different catalogue brand? What about the average Simply Be customer? Perhaps not. But when a celebrity is affiliated with so many diverse brands, it diminishes his value to any one brand, in my opinion. It makes him seem less sincere, and therefore less credible.

As a fairly small brand, I suspect Petite Affair has more to gain than to lose by hitching a ride with Wan. But I'm surprised that Simply Be didn't insist on some degree of exclusivity in its contract with Wan.

Then again, maybe I just receive too many emails and that's why I have my knickers in a twist.--SC