MoneyWatch Tech

How Brands Like Chanel and Bloomingdale's Are Fighting Google for Shoppers

By Chris Dannen

Updated on: December 23, 2010 / 4:26 PM EST / MoneyWatch

Editor's Note: to see our infographic slideshow on Retail Shopping in 2015, click here.
Earlier today I wrote about Best Buy's (BBY) plans to train "augmented salespeople." But what about the stores that don't want their associates toting iPhones? How are they getting into mobile commerce?

For those retailers -- largely high-end clothing brands -- the answer is the mobile Web app. A growing number of stores are deploying mobile apps for customers to use while inside the brick-and-mortar store, letting shoppers find more information on products, build wishlists, or get alerts for special deals.

The next step: branding. So what exactly is "branding" on a mobile website?

Brand = usability
"Last year it was just about getting a mobile site up," says Jason Taylor, VP of Global Product Strategy of Usablenet, a mobile Web development company that has built sites for a litany of major clients including Amtrak, Bloomingdales (M), Crate & Barrel, Chanel, Brookstone, JetBlue (JBLU), CVS (CVS), Staples (SPLS), American Airlines (AA), Marriott Hotels (MAR), Sears (SHLD) and American Eagle (AEO). "This year it's about extending the client's brand," he says.

"Chanel and Juicy Couture are two of our clients that are very interested in the UI," Taylor says, "and extending the brand experience that way." Big retailers like Best Buy have to fight about price, says Taylor, but boutique brands and luxury goods don't compete that way. "Most retailers are living by their brand, design and quality of their product, not by price" says Taylor. "Mobile this year has been a big push towards UI quality, so that people can really experience the products they're looking to purchase."

To be a platform, or just a brand?
Best Buy and other retailers want their products showing up in every conceivable product search. To that end, Best Buy has opted to become its own platforms by making inventories and prices openly searchable and embeddable by third parties like Milo.com, the inventory search engine. (With these tools, you can see which store near you has the TV you want in stock. It's the ultimate in impulse purchasing.)

Making this kind of price and inventory data available for anyone to troll isn't really interesting to big brick-and-mortar retailers, says Taylor. However, there are some online-only clothiers that are taking the platform approach: namely the fast-growing British e-tailer Asos.com, which also uses Usablenet for its mobile site.

"Asos is trying to be the discovery channel for fashion," says Taylor. "They're launching a marketplace in all their online environments which allows third-party boutiques to sell through Asos." While a company like Bloomingdale's might not be interested in being an aggregator, there are some companies like Asos that do. Their apps will become more and more platform-like and technological, while traditional retailers will rely on branding and experience as differentiators.

Uh-oh: Google and eBay

But this is where a clothing company like Asos runs head-to-head with Google, which has its own ambitions for fashion e-commerce. The search giant's new Boutiques.com is aimed at social product discovery and is back-ended by Google's revamped Product Search engine. That's exactly what Asos is trying to do -- as is eBay.

So will big brands like Chanel and Juicy Couture be able to keep shoppers inside their branded mobile apps? Will fashion shoppers take to fashion-only aggregators like Asos? Or will they default to searching with Google or eBay Mobile? After the dust has settled on Holiday 2010 shopping, there may be some obvious winners and losers.

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