Retail Spotlight US: H&M, UNIQLO and More

• It’s a tough time to be a fashion retailer and even tough to be a specialty store retailer of private label apparel or SPA.
• H&M received more total traffic over the past year, but traffic is down over the year. UNIQLO’s traffic increased by 11% at the same time.
• UNIQLO receives a high proportion of its website traffic from Reddit, specifically from a single subreddit aimed at finding fashion bargains for men.

We have already covered extensively the downturn in offline fashion retailing that has leaked into the online world. The “retail apocalypse” as some are calling it, presents a challenge to every retailer to find ways to differentiate their brand and reach the consumers who are still willing to purchase.

The past 18 months have seen traffic to online clothing retailers continue to drop with visits to the top 100 from January to May 2018 down by 16% from the same period in 2017. Within that group of retailers, there is a subgroup that has been declining at a faster rate–specialty store retailers of private label apparel, known in the industry as SPA retailers. SPA retailers in the US include H&M, Zara, UNIQLO, American Eagle, and J.Crew. Traffic to the top 10 SPA retailers, from January to May 2018 was down by 22% from the same period in 2017.

Even within this group of sites that seem to have been hit particularly hard by the downturn, there are a couple of sites that are thriving. Their success in a difficult period for retailers may provide encouragement for brands searching for a way to beat the slump.

While hm.com received more traffic in the last 13 months than some of its competitors, it has been trending notably downwards. Bucking the trend among SPA retailers, jcrew.com traffic stayed relatively flat while traffic to uniqlo.com from January to May 2018 was up almost 11% in the same period in 2017.

How Did UNIQLO Outperform the Market?

There are a number of factors that have contributed to UNIQLO’s growth in traffic over the past few quarters. To understand why it’s performing better than some of its competitors, it’s important to identify where its digital marketing strategy differs. Like other SPA retailers, uniqlo.com generates a high proportion of direct traffic. SPA retailers rely on branding and brand awareness to keep them at the forefront of consumers’ minds.

Traditionally SPA retailers also use organic search traffic, both branded and non-branded to drive traffic. Amongst its competitors, uniqlo.com received a considerably lower proportion of its traffic from organic searches.

Demographic Makeup and the Power of Social Media

Another key difference in incoming traffic to uniqlo.com is the prevalence of social media as a source. The site received just over 12% of its traffic from social media compared with hm.com and zara.com, both of which saw less than 5% of traffic from this source.

Drilling down further into the social media sites sending traffic to uniqlo.com reveals that around 70% of this traffic came from Reddit with less than 20% from Facebook.

Within Reddit, we were able to identify the particular subreddits that generated traffic to the site. Over 65% of the traffic from Reddit to UNIQLO came from a single subreddit called “frugalmalefashion”. This single thread within an enormous social media site was responsible for over 5% of all traffic to uniqlo.com over the past 12 months.

This concentration of traffic from a single subreddit also supports another aspect of the demographic makeup of UNIQLO’s online traffic. The gender breakdown for most SPA retailers online heavily favors female users, while uniqlo.com exhibits a uniquely even gender split. While the front page of the site looks very similar to its competitors, it seems UNIQLO is doing something extra to attract more visits from male consumers where reports are starting to suggest that men are spending more money than women on clothes and that they prefer to do so online.

The site with the closest gender mix to UNIQLO’s is jcrew.com. It is worth noting that jcrew.com also saw a larger proportion of its traffic from social media and that much of that traffic can also be traced to the same subreddit, r/frugalmalefashion.

Conclusion

In a difficult retail climate, winning brands are finding ways to acquire new customers. Other SPA retailers can learn from J.Crew and UNIQLO’s focus on male consumers and the way these sites harness the power of community and social media to drive visits and, ultimately, sales.

by Similarweb