Apparel Sale :: Tesco Launches Daring Fashion Site

In America, you have Wal-Mart; in the UK, there is Tesco.  Although not exactly the same, they are similar in nature and both considered retail giants.  You can get just about anything you need at either place.  However, there is one place you may find that they differ; Tesco is a little more forward thinking.

Known for being innovative and tech savvy, it is not surprising that they have come up with a this new concept.  Already, they track their customers preferences through their personal shopping cards, which makes each neighborhood Tesco specialized within their community.  So, for example, there will be more Indian food stocking the shelves in stores that are located in areas with a large Indian immigrant population or, they will stock more expensive items on the shelves of city stores.

Taking advantage of their highly successful online business - they're one of the few retailers worldwide that have made money selling groceries online - and in hopes of spurring offline apparel sales, they have launched a new interactive fashion site.

The site, named fashionfile, is located online, and Tesco has invited each of their card holders to create their own personalized fashion space.  Customers browse through items such as dresses, pants, etc. and bookmark what they like.

Each fashionfile member will receive personalized monthly emails, based on their selections, with marketing targeted specifically at them.  If that's not genius, I don't know what is. 

A Tesco spokesman says: “This is, quite simply, the biggest and most significant venture that we – and we believe any fashion retailer – has ever made into online relationship marketing.  Now that the database has reached the size where we can realise its value, more than half a million fashionfilers will be emailed with the launch details, making fashionfile a huge, industry-leading innovation. As well as being a new concept in online customer relationships, fashionfile will also provide an enormous amount of genuinely useful, personalised information to everyone who joins.”

I have personally been on the site and fiddled around with it.  Although I'm not fully sure what it brings to the user at this stage, I do see how much insight it can give to those in charge of marketing at Tesco.  It will be interesting to see how this site evolves.