Asos: the Rise of the Web Store

The Beginning

At the jump of the Millennium era, a small online fashion company called “As Seen on Screen” was born. Founders Nick Robertson and Quentin Griffiths had created an online store that would duplicate celebrity-inspired clothes. A decade later the name was shorten to ASOS and it has grown to be UK’s premiere dotcom companies, beloved by women of every age and every income bracket. According to ASOS Annual Report for 2013 it stated that “ASOS is a global fashion destination for 20-somethings. We sell cutting-edge “Fast Fashion” and offer a wide variety of fashion-related content, making ASOS.com the hub of thriving fashion community.” ASOS has over 65,000 brands of clothing, most of which are their own brand products. Their inventory increases by 2500 new merchandise that is added to the website every week. It has been counted that ASOS has around 67.1 million customers visiting their web-sites, but 7.1 million are active customers that are registered with ASOS (ASOS Annual Report).

What does ASOS do to make themselves so different from other online retailers? Besides selling 65,000 different brands of clothes online, ASOS ships for free in 234 countries and territories from their warehouse in the UK. They’ve created country-specific websites for the USA, China, Australia, France, Germany, Russia, Spain and Italy. They have staff that can speak to customers in five different languages, across email, Facebook, Twitter, phone, the website’s dedicated review centre, Google+, Instagram and Youtube (ASOS.com). ASOS mission? They are ‘customer obsessed’ so they want to give customers, wherever they are; the best experience possible. There is around 200 ASOS staff in their Customer Care centre in Hemel Hempstead United Kingdom. They are available to their customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year which most competition are not available like ASOS.

ASOS Minor Dilemmas

ASOS website has always been the keen tool of its success. When...