Where are all the online stores?

Yipeddy doo dah, Harvey Nichols has finally gone online! My question? What took ya so long guys? With competition fierce between the high street and online retailers like Asos.com, it makes sense in this digital age for all stores to have a transactional online presence. The luxury sector took this on board long ago with big buck brands like Dior (www.diorboutique.com) and Louis Vuitton (www.louisvuitton.com) racking up huge sales of their status-symbol sunglasses, bags and small leather goods. Burberry goes a step further selling clothing from its covetable Prorsum collection alongside its smaller wares and I’m sure I don’t even need to mention Net-a-Porter.com, which has been selling high-end designer fare to international customers for a good seven years.

Why are some brands lagging behind? New Look’s transactional website (complete with editorial content) was pencilled in for an August launch but precious little seems to be on the horizon. And Liberty is rumoured to be launching its transactional website sometime this year – could we even dare to imagine buying those delicious vintage Hermes belts and Erotikritos knits online some time soon? And sorry to be pernickety but a small request to those in charge, would it be too much to ask that we could have the entire stock available to us a la TopShop.com? If you’re going to get us all excited about your online store please don’t tease us with a few token items (yes, that’s you Houseoffraser.com), it’s 2007, we want the whole shebang or nothing at all.