Saïd Business School Resources Blogs

Jessica Brown, editor of fashion trade magazine Drapers, has just been appointed as Head of Fashion for Amazon’s UK business.  

In the early days of online retailing there was a prevailing wisdom that customers needed to be enticed on to the site by compelling editorial content, and that would lead to an opportunity to sell them products. In the early days of HMV’s online business in Japan, we had a team of writers producing such copy, including one of the most respected writers on jazz in Tokyo. That sort of approach fell out of favour as retailers concluded that such editorial material simply got in the way of a focused, efficient shopping process – with Amazon itself setting the standard on uncluttered browsing and checkout processes.

 Jessica’s appointment suggests that the online market leader has concluded that in a maturing market a more sophisticated approach is needed, particularly to compete with the explosive growth of Asos, suggesting that the thinking on this subject may have turned full circle.