YOU’D NEVER THINK that giving teenagers a place to talk about homework, their boyfriends and the likes of Marilyn Manson would enable an online clothing direct marketer to quadruple its sales in just a few months.
But that’s what happened when New York’s Alloy Designs introduced an online community center on its site (www.alloyonline.com) to give kids a chance to meet and schmooze while they’re shopping.
Alloy, which markets clothing and accessories for girls and boys, says its sales shot up some 400% and now total more than $20 million a year. Co-founder Matt Diamond hopes to continue the annual growth rate of 100%.
At deadline, the company, which also sells books and compact discs online, was negotiating carriage agreements with online booksellers Amazon. com and BarnesandNoble.com, and will soon introduce teen-specific search engines and other high-tech features on the site, says Diamond.
Alloy has amassed a visitor database with more than 1 million names. The company’s products include T-shirts, sweaters, baggy pants, pajamas, bathing suits and accessories ranging in price from $20 to $45.
Users click on the shop prompt to find a listing of the company’s products. Even before browsers choose a product category, the Web site (upgraded in March with help from OneSoft Corp., Annandale, VA) will flash a photo of a model wearing the specific garment simply by moving the cursor to the prompt. An average online order runs about $80.
The company was founded in January 1996 with a catalog and Web site. “The site was very basic then,” says Diamond. “It was just online versions of catalog pages.”
Despite the seeming lack of sophistication in the beginning, the site did accept credit card payments. However, the firm had to educate parents, according to Diamond.
“There were a lot of misperceptions about fraud,” he says. “We had to build a trust level and get them to see Alloy was a legitimate company.”
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