BRAS ONLINE : THE CHALLENGE
BRA FRAG
Bra Frag is short for the challenge consumers face when shopping for bras online: Bra Fragmentation.
While premium bra brands do a great job of keeping us shopping local, when consumer attention shifts online, the results are a trickle of bras and bra sizes scattered across hundreds of stores.
Bra fragmentation favors the bra-mart. Customers become frustrated with long searches for their size. This limits the small bra store’s ability to capitalize on the potential of selling bras online.
Our goal is to bring bras from small bra stores into one spot, here. This will help customers find bras quickly and encourage shopping at small bra stores in Canada. You will still shop at the small store, we will just do the searching for you. When you shop online from a small store, regardless of how far the store is, you shop local. Your purchase does good.
BRA FRAG TEST
We’re going to test some bras online against bra stores in Canada.
We ranked all the lingerie stores in Canada based on their traffic and domain rating through stats provided by ahrefs. These metrics allow us to estimate where a store will show up in a Google search and how much of the bra traffic they are absorbing.
We picked 15 stores fairly randomly. We took into account if they had ecommerce and where they landed in the rankings. We also chose 5 of the top 20 since they are the most popular, but still suffer from Bra Frag.
We picked 8 staple bras from popular brands and checked them against the 15 stores for “bra availability”. That means that, if a bra comes in 40 sizes, and a store has 12 sizes, their bras online availability is: 30%. They have 30% of available sizes for that bra in stock.
The 8 bras we chose for this test are:
Elomi Cate EL4030 | Latte
Simone Perele Andora 131343 | Peau Rose
Chantelle Hedona 2031 | Black
Empreinte Cassiopee 07151 | Black
Anita Momentum 5519 | Black
Anita Momentum 5529 | Black
Prima Donna Madison 0162121 | Black
Panache Sport 5021 | Black
SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM TO READ OUR CONCLUSION.
ELOMI CATE EL8030 | LATTE
SIMONE PERELE ANDORA 131343 | PEAU ROSE
CHANTELLE HEDONA 2031 | BLACK
EMPREINTE CASSIOPEE 07151 | BLACK
ANITA MOMENTUM 5519 | BLACK
ANITA MOMENTUM 5529 | BLACK
PRIMA DONNA MADISON 0162121 | BLACK
PANACHE SPORT 5021 | BLACK
BRA FRAG RESULTS
As we see, bra frag is a real problem.
It creates a legitimate challenge for both the bra retailer and the bra consumer when shopping for bras online.
It stifles the ability of the small bra store to make more online sales because :
1 – the customer loses patience having to browse from one store to another trying to find not only the bra they are looking for, but in the right size.
2 – it makes it difficult for the consumer when shopping for bras online to buy multiple bras from one bra store. They might find one bra in their size, but be limited finding other bras in the same size.
The bra retailer misses their opportunity to makes larger sales in multiples.
3 – This problem is aggravated for those buying plus size lingerie online. Most of the large bra-mart brands (think La Senza or Victoria’s Secret) cut off their sizing at DDD.
The brands that are effective at making plus size lingerie in Canada are almost all only sold at small bra stores. Yet, these stores suffer from Bra Frag.
Finding your bra online is further complicated by the limitations of Google. Google may find the bra, but is limited in sizing results. Often leaving the customer to click on a search result to find out that their size is unavailable.
This often leaves the customer feeling like they have no choice but to shop at bra-marts.
We intend to bring bra retailers and their bras together here.
Offering the consumer a way to find their bras easily and still shop local at a small bra store in Canada.
For bra retailers, this will give them more exposure and increase their ability to capitalize on the online bra market that we know is out there but is not reaching these great stores in communities across Canada.
Use the Bra Directory to shop local from anywhere.