The Revolution Online Retail Report sponsored by Ecommerce Expo: Fashion - Are clothes sites back in fashion?

As clothing retailers pour more cash online, Victoria Furness finds out if the market is set to really take off.

'Two years' work, five offices overseas, 350 staff. All these people trusted me and now I have failed them. What have I done? How could things have gone so wrong?' writes Ernst Malmsten, one of boo.com's three founders, in Boo hoo: a dot.com story from concept to catastrophe, his account of the soaring highs and plummeting lows that led to online fashion retailer boo's demise.

Perhaps rather tragically, Boo.com was experiencing steady growth in sales - dollars 500,000 (pounds 274,000) in its final two weeks - yet this wasn't enough to stop it being overwhelmed by a catalogue of errors, which included technological incompatibilities, overambitious global expansion, over-inflated visitor expectations and a loose approach to company spending.

In the immediate aftermath of the dotcom bust, prospects for e-commerce were bleak, but particularly so for clothing. Yet, clothes sites appear to be back in fashion. According to Verdict Research, the online clothing market was worth pounds 873 million in 2005, an increase of 24.5 per cent on the previous year. And it forecasts pounds 2.27 billion by 2010.

Although women are prolific online shoppers, more men are buying clothes on the web, up from 30 per cent in 2003 to 40 per cent in 2005, according to Verdict.

Some of the biggest factors driving growth are also driving the e-commerce market as a whole: convenience, 24/7 shopping and high-speed web access.

Statistics from Nielsen//NetRatings found that, in December 2003, 72.3 per cent of the UK population had connection speeds of up to 128k. Now that figure is only 17.2 per cent, as two-thirds enjoy 512k.

Unique items

One unique driver behind the clothing market is the opportunity to buy items that are hard to find on the high…