Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Mail Order: Make it So!

RantWoman succumbed. RantWoman was reviewing her early morning email and let herself click through to the sale page for one of her other favorite clothing purveyors. It does not matter which one. RantWoman simply wants to state some preferences clearly and unambiguously. Since none of the places she shops online live up to this fantasy, RantWoman is simply going to state her wishes and see whether the market does anything to accommodate her.

When RantWoman buys clothing she cares about, not entirely in order of importance:

price

fabric content

color, and "tangerine" or "kiwi" only very occasionally

size

key dimensions such as inseam length for slacks, leggings, capris...

length of garment for blouses, dresses, skirts, jumpers, coats

SLEEVE LENGTH for long-sleeved items, a data point which NONE of the sites RantWoman shops can ever characterize in more detail than "short" or "3/4 length." RantWoman's sad experience is that lots of items with allegedly "long" sleeves wind up having "3/4 length" sleeves on RantWoman

kind and number of fasteners such as buttons. RantWoman suffers the quaint delusion that sweaters should have closures and usually more than one. Once in awhile RantWoman takes it into her head to consider something withouth closures, a wrap or a belt, but if RantWoman is lingering over something like that, she will not be using her preferred profiles anyway.

immediate gratification: RantWoman very seldom cares about something that is not in stock, and she somewhat resents her clothing purveyors wasting her time with whole separate color / size availability screens while they gather data on color preferences for items that are not in stock.

RantWoman is aware that people come in all shapes and sizes and that items she would reject out of hand turn out to be ideal for other people. However in RantWoman's rich fantasy life, her various clothing providers would allow her to store preferred profiles and then let her search with those saved queries:

Show RantWoman all pants / slacks leggings of size ZZZ and length between xx and yy that are IN STOCK

Show RantWoman all jackets and sweaters of length between xx and yy with sleeve lengths at least zz that are IN STOCK

RantWoman would also prefer that these profiles remaind the default display mode as RantWoman browses both item categories and the sale rack.

In short, RantWoman would certainly consider stimulating the economy with some purchases, but RantWoman is busy ranting about the Kindle and would love her marketers to meet her halfway about making it faster!

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