The Outnet.com and Flash Sales concept

Those of you in the fashion retail space will no doubt be interested to hear that the people behind Net-A-Porter.com have started up a sub brand designed to serve the discounted designer fashion market.

It's called the Outnet.com and i would describe it as a kind of like a very, very upmarket TK Maxx (online).

The concept about what they're trying to do is explained here, but the thing that caught my eye was the way in which they're running "Flash Sales".



I think the Outnet are being quite innovative in this arena, merging traditional sale items with an ebay-esque "beat the clock" mentality (which will no doubt drive repeat visits) and harness impulse purchases at the same time. Whether or not spending hundreds of pounds on a new handbag worth $1,900 originally can be deemed an "impulse buy" is another matter but i don't think there products are really aimed at me... I'll be interested to see how low the prices go once this hits a critical mass of followers, but it certainly is an interesting approach to run sales and drive promotions.

A couple of things which weren't so good caught my eye as well, too many pop ups to explain the concepts of what they're trying to do and the fact the Going, Going Gone content was on a secure [https] page will not help with search engines, but i suspect the site will do very well as lots of people in the fashion world are talking about it already.