the Forzieri China website

While this might be bad news for Alipay, the ever-intensifying fight for market share is great news for Chinese consumers, who now have an increasing number of options for online shopping. As a Peopleâ€s Daily article this week points out, as online payment companies continue to duke it out and offer more incentives, Chinese shoppers can now avoid dealing with currency exchange and do more direct online shopping from individual global luxury brands or shopping portals.

From the article (translation by Jing Daily team):

Nowadays, consumers can skip the complex process of currency exchange, and purchase luxury goods from Gucci, Prada, Armani and other international brands directly through their websites.

Recently, after the Italian luxury brand Forzieri announced its cooperation with Paypal and launched a direct payment feature, the well-known fashion retail site Raffaello Network decided to test the waters of the Chinese online shopping market. As the No. 1 Italian fashion e-commerce website, Raffaelo Network sells Gucci, Prada, Fendi, Armani, Versace, Todâ€s and many other international brands. Consumers can not only choose from among 40 designers and 15,000 items according to their taste, but also enjoy an average 40% discount below retail prices.

It has been reported that during the transaction process, Paypalâ€s “overseas purchase” service helps domestic [Chinese] consumers exchange yuan into foreign currencies immediately, which is then paid to the seller for overseas shopping, which increases the convenience of direct transactions. At present, the “overseas purchase” feature supports currencies like the British pound, U.S. dollar, Swiss franc, euro etc. — 12 foreign currencies in all.

In response, industry insiders have claimed that the convenience of overseas payment has greatly stimulated the desire of Chinese consumers to shop online, which could lead to more overseas online shopping sites entering the Chinese market.

Global Luxury Brands “Testing The Waters” In Chinaâ€s E-Commerce Market originally appeared on Jing Daily, and is republished on Signature9 with permission.

Come September, consumers can purchase directly from marcjacobs.com

Reluctance to embrace technology and the Internet, however, has been the norm for luxury fashion brands. Most labels feared department stores would be angry if designers and their wealthy customers dealt directly with one another. A large number of brands relied on department store sites and others like Net-a-Porter to sell their goods online, but the state of the economy has forced department stores to cut steep prices, angering luxury companies that were already worrying about their relevance into the future and ability to compete with knock-off retailers. {The New York Times}

“I was so annoyed last year that I wished no one had our merchandise,” President and Vice Chairman of Mar Jacobs Robert Duffy told the New York Times. “All the department stores were panicked, and they were marking things down.”

Duffy also suggested that the online store for Marc Jacobs may offer exclusive merchandise to attract customers. {Elle}

Word on the street is Jimmy Choo, Hugo Boss, Vince, Lancôme, St. John, Theory, Kiehlâ€s, Lilly Pulitzer, Donna Karan and La Perla will soon or have already launched e-commerce stores on their own Web sites. It seems high fashion is finally realizing profits on clothes sold directly to consumers will be much higher with no middleman taking a cut or dictating prices.

High fashion has everything to gain by taking their products to their own Web pages, but the consumer may end up being the loser in this equation if luxury retailers pull their merchandise from department stores altogether and spike their prices. That may be unlikely to happen immediately, since the economic downturn has caused many aspirational customers to reduce spending on designer clothing, but when the recession truly fades and people begin spending more, high fashion prices might soar above skyscrapers.

The Seattle online retailer announced plans to relaunch their online clothing and shoe business with a focus on the high end market.  Amazon already owns Shopbop, which carries hot, mid-range designer labels like Elizabeth and James, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Diane von Furstenberg, Alexander Wang, and KORS by Michael Kors among others. Recently acquired Zappos, which started by selling shoes online (see our picks for on trend Zappos shoes under $100), also carries clothing now – specifically, some of the same secondary designer lines.

You may remember from our infographic of where the wealthy shop online, that Zappos reaches more  shoppers in the $100,000/year household income category than sites for Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue combined.

While it’s difficult to break out traffic to the apparel section of Amazon’s site specifically, Scot Wingo of ChannelAdvisor, a company that helps 3rd party sellers on Amazon and eBay, estimates clothing, shoe and accessory sales at Amazon.com to be anywhere from one-third to one-fourth of Amazon’s total $24.5 billion in sales. {Financial Times} There’s no word on if that includes sales from Endless.com, the separately branded shoe and handbag store the company launched in 2007.

The move comes after eBay revamped their fashion offerings to better compete with member sale sites like Gilt and Rue La La. eBay fashion now includes sample sales, a capsule collection from Narcisco Rodriguez similar to the type of pairing that H&M and Target have made popular, and a sleek new wrapper on the site to house it all.

With a focus on the holiday season, Amazon will use the data they’ve gathered up until October to enhance the user experience from selection to close of sale. Lest anyone underestimate the significance of this, Amazon’s tracking and testing of things as small as the color of buttons, or 3 or 4 words of text on a page, are part of what’s contributed to a 12.8% conversion rate, while industry norms are around 4.9% (and 2-3% isn’t unheard of as a normal rate of people who purchase, compared to people who visit). {ClickZ}

And it’s all of those things that should shake fashion technophobes, who are still indecisive about a serious commitment to online retail. While  companies like Zara and H&M are tepid in their response to the growing necessity of online shopping, at least they’ve started. They may also be prime candidates to partner with Amazon – for years, Amazon handled Target’s online operations, so suffice it to say they know a thing or two about handling large amounts of rapidly moving inventory.

No, the people who should really be afraid are the labels which will wait so long to get into e-commerce, or respond to the trends within it that are emerging, that re-capturing the attention of shoppers who’ve stopped checking back to see if they’ve joined the 21st century will be even more costly and require more effort than if they’d bitten the bullet and just done something. While the Net-a-Porters and Gilts of the world are pushing the online shopping experience to mobile devices and beyond, they’ll still be playing catch up for pushing splash pages and clunky flash intros.

Offline retail will never die, but consumers have decided that the experience they want isn’t always in a store. To the retailers and brands still weighing their online options: when companies that have built their billions catering to that shift decide to focus on your customer, you don’t have long to decide.

The move is attributed to a partnership with QVC.com, which will presumably become the sole online shopping destination for the brand. Returns for previous e-commerce orders will be accepted through January 2010.

Read more {Liz Claiborne}

In order to rebrand itself as a viable shopping source, today eBay will be unveiling The Inside Source, an online fashion and lifestyle magazine which will present current fashion and pop culture trends, in turn directing customers to certain items and vendors that fit within those trends.

The idea seems like a smart move for eBay, as it will certainly give the site a more polished, stylish update — but we wonder how The Inside Source will be marketed in order to bring in people who normally wouldn’t shop on eBay.

Read the full story {Bits Blog via NY Times}

Norma Kamali and Elie Tahari, on the other hand, are among the sparse selection of brands who have allowed their iPhone apps to mature into full hand-held shopping experiences.

Many luxury brands like Chanel have balked at the continuing trend of making everything internet-accessible (luxury is, after all, about exclusivity), but retailers in this day and age are better off swallowing their pride and keeping up with the Joneses and all their sparkly new tech toys.

Perhaps fashion really is on its way to becoming more democratic after all.

Read the full story {The Wall Street Journal}