BRA RETAILERS
Collaboration Is Our Strength
A big idea in business has been that each one of us is always in competition with the other.
But that is not the truth…at least, not the whole truth.
As a bra retailer at your street front location, yes, you do not want another bra store next to you, or even close.
But there is a new way to make bra sales: online.
Sounds easy, but if you have been online, you know it’s not.
Online is where collaboration benefits us. Working together makes us stronger.
CHALLENGES OF ONLINE BRA SALES
In our five years of working with bra stores and making online bra sales, we have noticed four things:
1 – Bra Store Owners Are Not Techies.
All the bra retailers we deal with have street front stores. They’ve been in business, on average, 10 years. Incredible women with a wealth of knowledge about bras. Expert bra fitters. Expert bra buyers. Outstanding trainers. Helpful. They have a passion for bras and their stores.
None of them are passionate about technology.
Bras are a hands on industry that takes place in the nitty gritty of a changeroom. Not on a computer.
I have yet to meet a technofile bra store owner.
2 – Online Bra Sales Are To Their Customer Base.
Most of their online bra sales are made to their own customers. Their website is an added level of service for their customers.
Most online sales are to women who have shopped in-store before.
What I hear is their website adds work and expenses to sell to the same customers.
3 – Low Web Visibility.
Most bra store websites have very low web visibility.
It is very hard for people outside a 20km radius to find their website.
LOW WEB VISIBILITY : WHAT IS IT AND WHAT BRA RETAILERS CAN DO ABOUT IT.
Did you know that 90% of web pages on the internet get 0 traffic?
ZERO!!
We analyzed the website of every storefront bra retailer in Canada with Ahrefs to see their traffic and where it comes from. The numbers are not 100% accurate but this tool is the gold standard for web metrics.
In Canada there are 203 bra store websites.
This excludes Direct to Consumer brands like Knix or Third Love. It excludes mall brands like Victoria’s Secret or La Senza. And excludes online only retailers like Your Bra Store or Fancy Panties. We also exclude large online retailers like Her Room and Bare Necessities.
The average organic traffic to a bra store website in Canada is 303 visits a month.
If we remove the top five stores from this list, the average organic traffic drops to 88!
The average online visibility for a bra store is 88 organic visits out of the 61,567 visits to independent bra store websites that take place every month.
On average, each small bra store averages a total of 0.14% of small store bra traffic in Canada.
If we add to that total the large online retailers (they sell the same bras brands as the small bra store, so we know the customer going there can just as well be your customer) the total organic web traffic a month goes to 115,230.
Of a total of 115,230 web visits for products that independent small bra stores in Canada carry, each store averages 88 of those visits.
That drops the average visibility of each bra store in Canada for the total bra traffic that happens to : 0.076%!!
A pittance for the hard working bra retailer in Canada!
Small bra stores, invisible online, have the best products, the best advise and the best service.
Hence : The Problem of Low Visibility.
WEB TRAFFIC TO BRA STORES
Let’s look a little more at web traffic to small bra stores.
While most stores get an average of 88 visitors a month of the total 61,567 visitors that are going to small bra store sites, that average is calculated after we removed the top five stores.
Here is the web traffic for the five bra stores in Canada that get the most traffic.
Those top five stores, are just regular stores with regular sites. They are bra retailers just like you.
They are bra stores like any other! There is nothing special going on there.
Ranking high is not unattainable.
Splitting that traffic more equitably is possible to more bra stores across Canada. The customers who end up in those top ranking stores are searching for stores just like yours, with the products you carry.
The layout of the internet has pushed some stores to the top and others to the bottom, and the inequitable results are staggering.
The problem of low online visibility is real.
THE SOLUTION : HOW TO DRIVE MORE CUSTOMERS TO YOUR STORE.
This may sound crazy, but ecommerce is in its infancy.
It will only grow. Not only in the amount of people shopping online, but how they shop online.
The future of ecommerce are sites that unite vendors. Consumers will shift shopping habits to supporting local stores. But, we still have to find a way to rank high. The way consumers interact with the internet is limited to the effort they are willing to put into searching.
We know that consumer engagement drops off dramatically after the second page of results. But we cannot all show up in those pages simultaneously, there is simply not enough room.
The key is to give them those local stores in one spot. Bra stores, and eventually, the bras.
We know that in the bra market there is an issue with product fragmentation; too many items scattered across too many sites. By giving them one site, with all the information, in an easily searchable way, we address the problems of low visibility and bra fragmentation.
The solution is collaboration. Together we can do more than any one store can.
If we revert to the approach that we are all in competition with each other, only a few will continue to reap the rewards of online sales. Most stores will continue to spend money on their sites with limited results.
Our strength together is that we have a narrative. By being together, we are unique. Being unique will give us visibility.
With visibility we will get that traffic and with that traffic will come more sales. And we know that with more sales, we help to strengthen bra stores and the communities they operate in.
By working together, the bra store owner can focus on their store and we focus on the technical. What we need is for you to buy in. Say yes. We can do this.
Our work costs nothing to you.
At the Bra Directory and Your Bra Store we work for you. The small bra store owner.
