ASOS is one of the most successful online-only fashion retailers in the industry. Originally a UK-based company, ASOS had the highest number of users in the European Union as of September 2023. Globally, there are over 23 million active customers on asos.com, which the retailer defines as “having shopped in the last twelve months” as of the end of the financial year.

ASOS's success
Since 2014, sales figures increased in every market ASOS was active in. With it's massive customer base, ASOS is easily ranked among the top online stores in the UK in 2023.

ASOS: a pure player in a multichannel industry

The apparel and clothing industry ASOS competes in is an increasingly multichannel one, where retailers offer their customers the best of both worlds, often providing convenient shopping and delivery options such as click-and-collect. However, the fact that ASOS has stuck to its online-only business model doesn’t seem to cause any disadvantages to the retailer. Based on enterprise-value-to-EBITDA, ASOS was one of the leading fashion e-commerce companies worldwide as of 2024.

Originally an online marketplace for things seen on television, hence the name ‘AsSeenOnScreen’, ASOS transitioned in the mid-2000s to an online retailer selling all types of apparel. It...

British online fashion retailer ASOS Plc invested 195 million British pounds in marketing in its latest financial year (September 2022 to August 2023). This figure marked an decrease of around 13 percent compared to the previous financial year.

ASOS

ASOS is an online fashion and beauty retailer headquartered in London. Founded in 2000 as a platform for celebrity clothing dupes, the company now sells a mix of over 90 thousand products from third-party brands and various in-house labels. Seeing that its expansive product portfolio caters to young adults with diverse fashion styles and budgets, it comes as no surprise that ASOS’s revenue and customer base have grown for over two decades. With a brand value of nearly a billion U.S. dollars, the e-retailer also ranks among the most popular retailers on the British internet.

An online marketing trailblazer

ASOS was voted the UK company with the most effective digital marketing strategy of 2020. Prior to that, the online retail business was also crowned ‘Brand of the Year’ at Marketing Week’s Masters Awards, outperforming household names such as Ikea and the Guardian. Companies from around the world look up to the British pure play fashion retailer for marketing inspiration, as ASOS effectively harnesses digital and social marketing channels with a focus on trends and inclusivity. In order to connect with audiences, the brand also launched the ASOS Insiders influencer program, which involves a network of content creators with different fashion styles promoting the brand’s products on sponsored social media accounts and the ASOS website. Customers can also use the hashtag #asseenonme to showcase their style and potentially be reposted by the brand.

As of May 2021, the highest number of ASOS manufacturing factories are situated in China, with a total of 231. India and Turkey come in second and third place for the number of ASOS manufacturing factories, with 217 and 130 factories respectively. ASOS, a UK-based online fashion and cosmetic retailer, has 24 manufacturing factories situated in the UK.

Manufacturing factories of Primark and C&A

When compared to the Irish and German retailer behemoths of Primark and C&A, ASOS has much fewer manufacturing factories as of 2020. The German-based retailer C&A has the most manufacturing factories out of all three, with Brazil taking the top spot at 643 factories. Whereas, the Irish-based retailer Primark also has the most manufacturing factories situated in China, with 525 factories as of January 2020.

Transparency Index of ASOS

The transparency index of ASOS ranked seventh among two-hundred fashion and apparel brands and retailers measured, with a score of 59 percent. The Fashion Transparency Index is measured based on the amount of information disclosed by retailers about their suppliers, their supply chain policies and their practices as well as their social and environmental impact. The retailer with the best transparency index score as of 2019 was Adidas, with a transparency score of 64 percent.

ASOS is one of the most successful clothing retailers that sell only through its online platform, Asos.com. Between February 2019 and October 2021, traffic to the ASOS website saw the highest visitor numbers in the run-up to the Christmas trading period in November 2020. A large portion of desktop visits to asos.com came from the United Kingdom, where the online retailer is based.

ASOS: the UK's online fashion darling In the last five years, ASOS’ online clothing business has flourished across every geographical market where the retailer is active. To this day, retail sales generated from the United Kingdom make this country ASOS’ biggest market. The European Union came in second, with over one billion British pounds worth of retail sales under its belt in 2021.

Strong share of voice When compared to other purely online and multichannel fashion retailers, ASOS has an outstanding presence across the web as well. By the end 2021, asos.com ranked second among the top fashion retailers in the UK based on their share of voice. Only surpassed by next.co.uk, asos.com had a share of voice of almost six percent, a metric that refers to each retailer’s search visibility as a percentage of the entire online fashion market.

All RNase H-dependent ASOs used for target mRNA reduction were 20 bases in length, all linkages were phosphorothioate and 2′-O-methoxyethyl residues were incorporated at the positions 1–5 and 16–20. An analog of each ASO was also synthesized with 2′-O-methoxyethyl at each position.*Asterisks indicate ASOs targeting SOD/TO-AB mutant sites and base changes relative to parent ASO are indicated by lower case letters.Sequences of ASOs used in the study.

Shein's market share in the United States more than doubled between March 2020 and March 2022, going from approximately 18 to 40 percent. This market share gain occurred at the expense of nearly all other fast fashion companies in the United States, as all except Zara saw their market share dwindle during that time period. Most notably, H&M's market share in the U.S. decreased ten percentage points between March 2020 and March 2022. By November 2022, Shein held 50 percent of the U.S. fast fashion market.

Fast fashion e-commerce

As the fast fashion industry continues to evolve, Shein is not the only e-commerce pure player disrupting the overall landscape. Companies such as ASOS and Zalando, for example, can turn out collections with remarkable speed, providing an edge against their brick-and-mortar competitors. From 2020 to 2022, net sales at ASOS.com are forecast to increase by more than two million U.S. dollars. Over the same time period, Zalando's net sales are forecast to increase by nearly one million U.S. dollars.

The rise of Shein

Shein may not be the only e-commerce pure player changing the landscape of the fast fashion industry, but it is definitely the most prominent one. According to estimates, the fast fashion giant has seen its revenue increase by more than 22 billion U.S. dollars since 2016. Maybe even more impressive is the fact that Shein.com was the second fastest growing e-commerce website in the world in 2022, and was the only fashion company to crack the list.

Boohoo is an online-only fashion company, that has enjoyed success in the UK clothing sector since becoming active in 2006. Over the past decade, the company’s revenue has grown massively, almost reaching the two billion pound mark in 2022. By 2024, the company reached 1.8 billion pounds. The retailer specializes in clothing lines for young consumers aged 16-30, and sells its own-brand products. Large user base around the globe Boohoo is a pure player and has presence in markets outside the UK. Over the years, the retailer has exponentially expanded its user base, with millions of active users on its platform worldwide. In the 2023 financial year, the number of Boohoo shoppers was 18 million. Online, digital and social Boohoo is the kind of retailer that many high street clothing brands that have long been in the game is fearful of: it’s young, hip, and digital and already changing the face of fashion, taking it from store to the screen. In 2023, boohoo.com ranked among the leading UK fashion websites, based on its Share of Voice score. Boohoo was surpassed by Amazon, ASOS, another online-only fashion brand, and the multichannel fast-fashion retailer Next.

According to Pi Datametrics, in the second quarter of 2021, approximately 918 thousand individual search terms for “prom dresses” were typed on Google UK. In addition, UK consumers looked for boxers and dresses, using these search terms around 614 thousand times, on average.

How the UK fashion e-commerce market measures up The UK is a mature e-commerce market, and the number of apparel digital shoppers is expected to grow on a sure and steady course. In the fashion segment, the UK has one of the largest e-commerce revenues in the world, though it still ranks far behind China and the United States. In 2020, the UK was the third biggest clothing and footwear market globally based on total consumer spending.

Johnlewis.com stands out as the leading online store based on e-commerce net sales in the UK. John Lewis Partnership plc generates around one billion British pounds from fashion sales every year. In terms of online traffic, the retail brand receives most of its visitors through online search.

UK fashion’s voice on Google For retailers, online presence has never been more key than now, when Google visibility determines a business’ reach and relevance for its customers. In the UK, Next.co.uk and ASOS.com are the fashion retailers whose websites had the highest share of voice.

Amazon started its life as an online bookseller in a Seattle garage, as the lore goes. But by now it has become the online retailer of nearly everything, active in many geographical markets and delivering to many other locations. While the retailer’s success story is often accompanied by the criticism of Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos, consumer attitudes towards Amazon reflect this only to a small degree.

UK consumers happy with Amazon As seen in the present statistic, this was apparent in a survey conducted with UK shoppers in 2019. According to the results of the study, nearly half of respondents said they had no problems with Amazon, while more than a quarter expressed that they actually loved Amazon. Only a tiny fraction, at about nine percent, felt guilty when they purchased goods from the retailer.

Amazon as a fashion retailer

The same study also revealed that Amazon was popular among shoppers as an online platform for fashion items. Ranking ahead of some of the UK’s leading online-only clothing brands such as ASOS, Boohoo, and Farfetched, Amazon was picked as a go-to retailer by fashion shoppers in the UK. ASOS, which has over 20 million active users worldwide came right after Amazon, with only 12 percent of those surveyed citing it as their favorite online clothing shop.

In the fashion industry, ethical consumption has been a much-discussed topic recently. In February 2019, the UK Parliament released a report on ethical consuption and sustainability in fashion, urging retailers to take into consideration the ethical and social cost of clothing items.

Ethical companies in fashion

According to the rating table compiled by Ethical Company Organization, the leading three retailers to score the highest ethical score in the United Kingdom were People Tree, Finisterre, and the School Uniform Shop. As displayed in this statistic, while fair trade brand People Tree topped the list with its ethical company score, fast-fashion retailers such as ASOS received a score of 67. This score was slightly below the benchmark score for ethical performance in the apparel category.

Consumer interest in ethical fashion

In the meantime, the ethical clothing market is expanding in the UK, which is good news indicating an increase of consumer interest in buying from ethical brands. According to the results of a 2020 survey, about one-fifth of UK consumers said they cared about the environmental impact of the clothing items before they buy them. This share was considerably higher in other European countries, particularly in Spain where almost a quarter of the interviewed consumers said the environmental impact of clothing items was something they thought of a great deal.