Labels with a strong brand message continue to draw consumers to the cash register.

According to the 2011 Fashion Brand Index by Brand Keys Inc., 29 percent of U.S. apparel buyers gravitated toward brands with a distinct point of view when deciding what to buy. These include Ralph Lauren, Armani, Calvin Klein and Brooks Brothers, among others.

“With every fashion option, from black T-shirts to the latest couture, brand meaning is increasingly a larger factor in the buying decision,” said Amy Shea, executive vice president of global brand development for the New York-based brand and customer loyalty research firm. “This fits with what we are seeing, not only in fashion, but across all the product/service categories we track. Those brands that actually stand for something are being sought out by consumers…when it comes time to decide which brand to buy.”

Seven years ago, fewer than 3 percent of apparel purchases felt fashion brands and logos were important, but that number jumped to 14 percent in 2009 and doubled, to 28 percent in 2010. This year, it has inched up to 29 percent.

“That shows that is not an anomaly,” Shea said. “This is a real change in mind-set. Brands have become more important and that’s how consumers make their decisions.”

In a world “overrun by commodities,” Shea added, “true brands provide meaningful differentiation, which is why so many of the fashion brands consumers feel most engaged with are luxury brands, which have built their houses on emotional meaning.” She said it’s “no accident” that these brands rank high with consumers. “Price isn’t their strong suit; they stand for something.”

But it’s not just luxury brands, with their big marketing budgets, that made the list. J. Crew, Guess, Levi’s and Banana Republic were also ranked high this year.

“The Gap does a ton of advertising but didn’t make the list,” she said. “It’s because they don’t really stand for anything. They have trouble creating differentiation. J. Crew is similar, but made the list. It’s not just the Michelle Obama factor, but it’s also that they’ve carved out a place for themselves by acting like a couture brand.”

The survey was conducted among 7,500 men and women between 21 and 65 years of age.

When the weather outside was frightful, shoppers found online shopping delightful.

ComScore Inc. reported Wednesday that, during the stormy weekend of Dec. 19 and 20, online sales increased 13.3 percent, to $767 million from $677 million during the comparable weekend in 2008. The challenging weather conditions in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic during the final weekend before Christmas kept many U.S. shoppers indoors and online, helping to boost e-commerce sales for the period between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 to $27.12 billion, 4.9 percent higher than the $25.85 billion spent online during the 2008 holiday season.

Adjusting for an extra shopping day this year, comScore put the year-on-year increase at a more modest 3.5 percent, but that’s still more than a 6 point swing from the 3 percent decline registered for holiday 2008 versus the 2007 season.

Not all of the data shared by comScore was positive. The Reston, Va.-based digital research firm noted that, while there was an increase in the number of people buying online this year, the amount spent per buyer dropped slightly.

Consumer electronics appeared to be the biggest beneficiary of this year’s surge in online shopping, with increases of over 20 percent.

Jewelry and watches also excelled following a particularly difficult performance in 2008. While comScore didn’t provide specific figures on the category, earlier it reported that, in November, sales of e-commerce sites offering jewelry, accessories and luxury goods saw the number of their unique visitors rise 15.2 percent to 17.7 million from 15.3 million in October.

“The season featured a strong start as a result of early retailer promotions and a very strong finish helped by the snowstorms that occurred the weekend of Dec. 19 and 20, retailers’ willingness to offer free shipping later in the season and consumers’ confidence in expedited shipping arriving in time,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore. “This was also a year when retailers substantially boosted their use of social network marketing and the larger retailers significantly outperformed their smaller brethren.”

Consistent with the latter trend, comScore said earlier that department store e-commerce sites experienced a 29.9 percent increase in unique visitors last month, to 80.8 million from 62.2 million. Kohl’s Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp., Sears Holdings Corp., J.C. Penney Co. Inc. and Macy’s Inc. were among the broadlines retailers with traffic increases of at least 34 percent. Kohl’s was up 59.1 percent, highest among stores carrying apparel, and Wal-Mart’s 55.1 percent increase included a 62 percent monthly growth rate at walmart.com.

“In these tough economic times, the retailers with sufficient financial resources and a willingness to invest in aggressive marketing and free shipping offers were clear winners,” Fulgoni concluded.

ComScore disclosed earlier this week that online sales were up 11.4 percent on Black Friday, Nov. 27, to $595 million, and up 6.4 percent, to $887 million, on Cyber Monday, Nov. 30. However, volume on those days was surpassed by the $913 million transacted online on Tuesday, Dec. 15, when sales were up 21.1 percent. Internet shoppers spent $854 million online on Green Monday, Dec. 14, a 0.6 percent decline more than offset by business on the following day.

On Thanksgiving Day, receipts tallied $318 million, 10.4 percent ahead of the prior year.

Fashion’s battle to attract dollars from thrifty consumers highlights a larger, almost existential struggle for the future of the apparel industry — which is already losing its iron grip on consumers’ discretionary dollars.

Despite the collective sigh of relief that the holiday season wasn’t as bad as last year, recent sales trends are still a sobering reminder for retailers. The hottest items this holiday weren’t apparel related but instead were iPhones and other smart phones, BluRay DVD players — even toy hamsters.

Day-to-day, the apparel industry also has a growing number of challengers, from apps to bars and restaurants to automakers hawking hybrids. The industry gets mixed grades for product innovation, marketing and other key business functions — and unless it acts fast, the downward spiral might accelerate.

The good news is observers believe the industry still has a chance to get out of its rut and begin anew.

“Fashion is being outfashioned by other industries,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at The NPD Group. “The smart phones have now become probably not only the most passionate purchase, but also an expensive [and] frequent repurchase.”

While 43 percent of Black Friday shoppers polled by The NPD Group online said they had purchased apparel, 49 percent bought electronics, the leading classification. That trend held throughout the holiday season.

And apparel is expected to lose more ground next year. A survey of consumer spending from Kurt Salmon Associates found that 10 categories, from home goods and shoes to electronics and furniture, were headed into 2010 with more momentum than apparel.

To keep the attention of consumers and produce lasting success, fashion companies have to solve a relatively unique set of problems.

Apparel retailers have long lead times and have to basically guess what consumer tastes and even the weather will be like in six or nine months. And the inventory they buy is perishable, something like food in the grocery store, and it rarely makes economic sense to warehouse unwanted looks in the hope they’ll come back into style. The industry has to reinvent itself every few months, moving forward continually, or risk becoming dated.

But that reinvention has slowed on all fronts with the recession bearing down.

“Stores in the fashion world right now, they are dusty,” said Martin Lindstrom, marketing expert, branding strategist and author of “Buy-ology: Truth and Lies About What We Buy” (Doubleday). Although retailers introduced a number of concepts earlier this decade, innovation has largely sputtered, he said. And some of those concepts, such as Abercrombie & Fitch Co.’s Ruehl, have failed.

“They’ve reached a point where they’ve really been falling asleep and suddenly nothing new is happening,” Lindstrom said of fashion retailers. “It’s like going into a museum.”

By contrast, he said shoppers going online, on their computers or increasingly on their handhelds, are “constantly bombarded with new and interesting stuff.”

The wonders of the plugged-in world, from Twitter and Facebook to Flickr and beyond, are now available on the go and for a price.

“The functionality of the latest electronics marks a serious consumer challenge to the apparel industry,” said Warren Berger, author of “Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life, and Maybe Even the World” (The Penguin Press). “There’s a sense out there that you have to have [the latest gadget] to be part of the current debate or the current lifestyle,” he said. “That’s a very compelling sales pitch. In the fashion design realm, you really don’t have that kind of compelling case you can make.”

Brand executives often brag that their line is like nothing else on the market, but that claim is often scripted hyperbole or too narrowly true to have any real relevance to consumers looking to stretch their extra dollars.

“There are very few needs when it comes to fashion,” said Robert F. Buchanan, a finance professor at Saint Louis University who was an equity analyst for 24 years.

Buchanan pointed to designer denim as the most recent new and compelling apparel offering to catch fire. Fashion companies are being too conservative and too safe and need to let their designers be creative to flourish and come up with the next big thing, he argued.

“I’d give them a D-minus for failing to look past the tip of their nose,” Buchanan said. “Right now, [fashion companies are] too focused on maximizing sales and profit, too uptight. Just let the designer relax and try new stuff out and at some point she or he will come up with something. Quit breathing down their necks because sales are slowing down.”

Publicly held fashion companies are often criticized for chasing short-term gains to turn in the sales increases Wall Street wants each month, or at least each quarter, at the expense of their longer-term success.

Miscalculations are common, forcing fashion companies to try to raise their prices or cut their costs to compensate.

“You have to have high [profit] margins to deal with the ebb and flow and the greater product risk than you have in consumables,” said Chris Donnelly, a partner in Accenture’s retail practice.

“You’re not just fighting the store you’re across the way from in the mall,” Donnelly said. “That’s one battle you need to fight, but you also need to fight this larger battle. It’s an arms race of sophisticated marketing.”

Donnelly described fashion’s reliance on the whims of style as “a blessing and a curse.” Hitting a trend right can lead to a large uptick in full-price sales, but missing the mark is often financially painful. Competitors from other industries are also always there, with a more consistent offering of other types of products to win the shopper’s dollar.

Marketing is the battle that fashion companies — an image-conscious group if ever there was one — are rather well prepared to fight.

“You have to be better at marketing than the average bear if you’re going to be successful,” said Mike Moriarty, partner and head of the retail practice at management consultant A.T. Kearney.

But the industry uses marketing to a different end than, say, consumer products firms.

“The difference in [fashion’s] marketing is that it is not so much reminding the consumer of how good the product is, but actually getting the consumer to get out of their chair and buy something,” Moriarty said. “As a result, successful fashion companies are going to be far more innovative and forward looking.”

Pairing up the right message with the right product is the tricky part.

“The consumer has been so hard to envision in the last year or two that it’s been very difficult for fashion companies to strike that success,” Moriarty said.

Zhu Zhu Pets

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Project New York will move to a new home in January, after showing for one season at the Lexington Avenue Armory in July. The trade show’s upcoming location is in a raw event space at 82 Mercer Street in SoHo. The 25,000-square-foot loft is in a building that also houses an Old Navy store on the ground level and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex museum, which is set to close on Jan. 3, in the basement level.

“It’s a beautiful space with high ceilings, brick archways and wood floors,” said Sam Ben-Avraham, president of Project, which is owned by Advanstar Communications. “We will have our own entrance and our own elevators — and it’s a nonunion building.”

Project has led a somewhat peripatetic existence in New York since its founding in 2003, having shown in the Puck Building, the Metropolitan Pavilion, 7 World Trade Center, Pier 40, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and the Lexington Avenue Armory. Ben-Avraham said the moves highlighted the challenges of finding suitable show spaces in Manhattan. He added it was difficult working with the Javits Center and the Armory to secure appropriate dates.

Project’s move comes as the New York men’s trade show arena is in a state of flux, with the MRket and Vanguard shows now established at the Javits Center; The Designers Collective and Blue downsizing next season from their longtime home at Pier 94 to The Tunnel and La Venue in Chelsea, and Capsule expanding into two spaces, The Puck Building and the Angel Orensanz Foundation.

Ben-Avraham said he expects Project New York to remain at its SoHo location for the foreseeable future. He expects to host about 150 brands at the January show.

Burberry’s Artofthetrench website

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Fashion and luxury brands still grappling with Facebook and Twitter should brace themselves: Foursquare and Google Wave are among new tools on the horizon with potential applications for brand building and e-commerce.

Experts are still counseling measured and clear-headed steps into the digital world, which continues to be unfamiliar and tricky territory for brands accustomed to tightly controlling their image and information about their products and business.

“Fashion has struggled a lot with the acceleration of everything,” said Lucian James, founder and creative director of strategic consultancy Agenda Inc., based in New York and Paris. “Whether they like it or not, in the new environment, luxury brands are also publishers. They will need to find new kinds of information and new ways to deliver it.”

James said “real-time” is poised to be one of the buzzwords of 2010. Suddenly, “the amount of information that marketing and public relations teams can generate is an increasingly small percentage of what is being said,” he said. “And because of the way search engines work, it is the most popular voices that rise to the surface. That’s the power of the blogger.”

He characterized the shift to social media as “just an extension of the democratization of fashion” that has gained momentum in recent years.

Still, the rush of new technology and media is unsettling for brands accustomed to delivering a monologue rather than engaging in dialogue, and imposing large-format images rather than 140-character tweets.

“You have to embrace it and not fear it,” said Antoine Arnault, communications director at Louis Vuitton, which ranked number one in the apparel category in LuxuryLab’s annual ranking of 109 luxury companies according to their online competence, called the Digital IQ Index. “It’s a way of being closer to your customer.”

Arnault is certainly hands-on with digital communication, even tapping out impressions on Twitter last June when he traveled to New York to present Vuitton’s creative director, Marc Jacobs, with the CFDA’s International Award.

“If Kanye West comes in our store on Rodeo Drive, we’re going to Twitter about it,” he said. “[People] want instant information, not only on products but who’s wearing it.”

Yet there are hazards and challenges on the way to online resonance.

For example, using a cocktail party analogy, James said sending out facts and figures about a brand’s heritage on Twitter, as Vuitton does, is tantamount to “announcing your birthday without being asked. It’s not wrong; just not the most comfortable or most interesting thing for everyone else to hear.”

“Online information transmission doesn’t work in the same way as offline: You don’t drop 30 ad spots on a Web site just as you would do on TV,” added Uché Okonkwo, founder and executive director of Paris-based Luxe Corp. “Today’s Web is about exchanges, connecting and dialoguing, and all these things are new to luxury brands.”

Okonkwo said most brands are flummoxed when it comes to evoking desire and “creating a dream” using word-based formats like Twitter. “Using words to create the same effect as a beautiful advert image that makes your heart race with desire is a real challenge, but luxury must learn this additional language.”

Bruno Pavlovsky, president of Chanel fashion, said the firm’s chief mission online is conveying a level of quality and luxury commensurate with its products and retail network. “We need to be able to differentiate ourselves through this new world — and this is the big challenge,” he said. “We are behind this new approach, but we need to keep this high level of excellence.”

Last month, Chanel quietly added a Facebook page to its digital arsenal, which already includes a Web site, iPhone app and podcasts. In March, the French luxury firm plans to spin off the informational component of chanel.com with a dedicated site, chanel-news.com. Its main fashion site already gets an average of 1 million visitors per month.

“The idea is to give all these social networks a location where they can have genuine information about Chanel,” Pavlovsky said, characterizing it partly as an antidote to false rumors and information that might circulate the Web beyond the company’s control. The Chanel news site will be designed to deliver information quickly, with the brand’s international offices equipped to feed into it.

Imran Amed, editor and founder of the Business of Fashion Web site, noted that brands were always discussed in “everyday conversations with and between consumers” and therefore did not ever fully control brand perception. But the difference today is that “official communication through advertising and p.r. is drowned out by online conversation.”

The good news is that “online fans have mostly positive things to say,” he said. “People are passionate about luxury brands, and therefore companies can actively engage with their fans to inspire and nurture positive conversations, while also taking on any criticism as constructive feedback on where they can make changes.”

Marni Salup, founder of The Salup Group, a public relations and digital marketing agency in New York, agreed brands can glean “insight into the psychographic profiles of their customers” by listening and responding to the online conversation.

However, brands can still control how to disseminate crucial information, online or offline. “Where you choose to break your story should really be about your audience and where they get their info, and the value of that media outlet to the brand,” Salup said. “We factor in their target audience, launch time frame, core messages, positioning and overall objectives.”

Vuitton’s Arnault said he considers Porsche and Apple the benchmark companies in terms of digital communication. He noted Vuitton likely tends to diffuse information as news organizations do: a glimpse of it online, and deeper treatments in print and broadcast media.

Agenda Inc.’s James noted the Web’s global reach poses an additional challenge for brands whose image and end consumer vary across geographic regions. “Certain luxury brands represent old-money wealth in some geographies and state-of-the-art bling in others, and they have to negotiate both personalities without becoming schizophrenic,” he explained.

Okonkwo argued a brand’s online presentation, especially its Web site, contributes to ultimate buying decisions. If a Web user reads a positive blog post about Viktor & Rolf or Burberry and is redirected to their Web sites, “I am more likely to make a purchase as they provide a rich, complementary online experience,” she said. “If, on the other hand, I arrive at a Web site where I feel like I’m back to 1995, I will likely make an exit, irrespective of how much I was influenced by the blog post.”

In the past, many brands used interns to oversee “digital media stuff,” whereas now they are staffing up and creating new roles and functions, observers agreed.

“You have to manage many different supports. Today, digital is a lot about technical things and you have to adapt your structure and organization,” noted Chanel’s Pavlovsky. “We are working with Karl [Lagerfeld] and starting to manage the needs better.”

Long a passionate and prolific photographer, Lagerfeld recently started contributing exclusive video content to Chanel’s Web site, from scenes of him fitting collections at the Rue Cambon salons to “making-of” clips for advertising campaigns.

Chanel dedicates roughly 10 percent of its communication spend to digital media, Pavlovsky said, acknowledging it is difficult to measure the direct impact on sales, especially as the firm has no online boutiques. Only fragrance and beauty products are sold online.

Agenda’s James noted the ability to measure the return on investment in social media — whether higher sales, customer retention or brand perception — will be key to its long-term success.

Dolce & Gabbana won lots of publicity for plunking bloggers in the front row of its latest Milan fashion shows, and its online activities include its site Swide.com, YouTube and an ongoing Twitter feed that recently revealed Madonna would appear in next season’s ad campaign.

The landing page at rugby.com.

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NEW YORK — Much has been said about the fashion show system and its flaws in recent months, and now Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. is making an online move that could one day create new alternatives.

When the company presents its first-ever show for the Rugby Ralph Lauren brand today, it will launch a new format — a virtual runway show with a “make-your-own” option that allows viewers to put together their favorite looks; see them in motion on actual models sashaying through a sophisticated, virtual, Rugby brand-inspired environment, and buy them.

Polo plans to extend the technology to its Lauren by Ralph Lauren and Ralph Lauren children’s wear brands next year.

“We have been doing fashion shows for years, and Ralph Lauren is always challenging us to rethink [the concept] and make it interesting,” said David Lauren, Polo’s senior vice president of advertising, marketing and corporate communications. “One of the challenges that we have had as we have grown different businesses is showing the product line in its entirety, especially as we are a global company. With the economy, people are not flying in for fashion shows, and while the significance of fashion shows as a sales tool has grown, the cost to editors and customers to see them has become more complicated.”

The virtual event, which launches at rugby.com, allows consumers to create their own runway show from a run-of-show list, pick their own soundtrack from a list of tunes by the likes of the White Lies and Amanda Blank, and forward the show to others as a wish list of sorts.

The new development addresses a myriad of issues Polo executives have been pondering, along with many others in the industry. These include the fashion system that hypes clothes months before they make it to stores; the cost of producing runway shows at a time when nearly every company is looking to cut unnecessary expenses, and technological innovations that allow brands to reach millions around the world with a brand message they control.

Lauren explained the firm’s online traffic typically peaks when it posts the Collection shows on ralphlauren.com each season. “We can have 3 or 4 million visitors come and see a fashion show in the course of two or three days,” he said. “The problem is that the fashion shows as we know them are not necessarily lined up with the ultimate time to sell the product. What is happening now is that people show fashion shows, and the product is not even available. It’s missed opportunities. How do you become more efficient and effective at marrying the fashion show with the sales opportunity?”

Lauren cited the recent debate about the merits and challenges of the current fashion cycle to the business of fashion. Technology, he said, may be able to offer some solutions.

“What is starting to happen now is that the Internet has really transformed the cadence of the music industry, the movie industry, and the television industry,” Lauren said. “Right now, you can TiVo a show, and you don’t really care what time it’s on. The traditional schedules as we know them have been blown away, and technology is the cause, and making sure that you can get ahead of the technology and use the technology to your benefit is the challenge for every company. We are seeing the value of the fashion show, so we want to get one step ahead. We want to introduce a fashion show during the holiday season so that you can buy now, and we want to do it in a way that is appropriate to the Internet.”

In fashion, Polo has pioneered several technological developments, from 24-hour interactive store windows to incorporating QR technology for mobile commerce, and it was one of the first brands to have its own iPhone application. Polo also recently introduced a Rugby Make Your Own iPhone App.

Lauren said the company considers the new virtual runway show as something “game-changing” for the industry.

“It’s something that Ralph Lauren really believes in — enough to say, ‘I want to do this for a plethora of our brands,’ and really want it to change the way we think about fashion shows,” Lauren said. “Right now there is a lot of discussion. People are cutting their budgets, and are spending a million dollars a show. You can produce this for very little, and you can do this with no audience and no invitations, and you can reach a million times the amount of people.”

The company will post an ad on YouTube today that could reach 40 million households — a far cry from the 300 to 400 guests who typically get to see the Ralph Lauren Collection show.

Lauren declined to disclose the cost of the virtual show, but said it was well “under $1 million.” Asked whether he could envision the Collection show becoming virtual, he said, “We have certainly discussed it, but not this season. We have committed to three brands at different levels. We have committed to a small brand, to a mega brand, which is Lauren, and we have committed to children’s.

“We don’t know if we’ll ever do this [for Collection], but if this starts to work, and if the industry starts to change….It’s just like everybody says: ‘Are you going to read a book online?’ or ‘Are you going to listen to your music on your iPhone?’”

Asked how the concept takes the long-lead requirements of editors and retailers into consideration, Lauren said, “You can create a show and [present] it at different periods,” he said.

“This is not just about a cute little technology, or a cool bell and whistle,” Lauren added. “This is a statement to the industry about the power of the Internet. This is a changing of the cadence and keeping up with what is happening in the industry and trying to get ahead of it.”

Mark’s Facebook sales widget.

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Move over, glossy product brochure. Mark has gone viral.

Mark, Avon Products Inc.’s flirty beauty and fashion brand for young women, has broken new ground in the virtual world by introducing one of the first digital social selling applications on Facebook. According to the social networking site and Avon, Mark’s sales widget is a first for the beauty industry.

The online tool, which launched on Nov. 19, allows members to socialize and buy products from Mark representatives without ever leaving Facebook. The selling platform was developed in partnership with Alvenda Inc., a Minneapolis-based technology firm that has helped other companies launch Facebook storefronts. Alvenda’s client 1-800-Flowers was the first to launch a fully functioning store on the site, said Wade Gerten, Alvenda co-founder and chief executive officer. Mark was the first to incorporate the social features of Facebook by allowing buyers to search their network of friends for a Mark representative.

A Facebook spokeswoman said 1-800-Flowers, which launched in July, was the only similar selling application she had spotted on the site. But sifting through Facebook’s 1.6 million active fan pages from companies is no small task. The spokeswoman noted that each day, 10 million Facebook members join companies’ fan pages. The fast-growing social networking site boasts 350 million members, up from 200 million in April.

Avon’s move to link online shopping and social networking ties into Mark’s larger strategy of infiltrating communication channels most relevant to the legion of 40,000 to 50,000 Mark representatives, who range from 18 to 30 years old.

The Facebook widget also helps Mark circumvent the same sales hurdle facing its mother brand, Avon: Unanswered doorbells. If successful, Mark’s viral effort could breathe new life into an antiquated business model of selling from a brochure, door to door, catapulting the Avon offshoot into a power player in the beauty world.

At a recent meeting with analysts, Avon — a more than $10 billion company — declared it planned to commit $50 million over the next several years to its social networking strategy, recalled Caris & Co. analyst Linda Bolton Weiser. While at the time the company was mum on details, Weiser said, “It certainly piqued the interest of a lot of investors.”

Stifel Nicolaus analyst Mark Astrachan said, “Avon doesn’t spend as much [as other beauty firms] from a marketing point of view,” adding the direct seller allocates about 4 percent of its revenue to advertising and marketing, which includes representative programs. “Avon needs to educate consumers a bit. Maybe Facebook is how you do it.”

The direct seller took its first stab at going viral in late August, when Mark introduced a free iPhone application on iTunes. The app makes direct selling more relevant to the twentysomething-year-old Mark representative. Rather than pull a wrinkled catalogue — or magalogue, as Mark calls it — from her bag, the rep can page through the brochure on her iPhone, said Annemarie Frank, Mark’s head of e-commerce and digital media.

The need to tap social networking become clear, recalled Frank, while scanning data on the effectiveness of e-mail blasts to representatives. “We found that e-mail blasts have a 10 percent open rate,” said Frank. Referring to Mark’s demographic, she said, “E-mail is a like dinosaur to them.” This crowd prefers text and online communities, like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, emphasized Frank.

When Avon chairman and ceo Andrea Jung tapped Claudia Poccia in 2005 to run the Mark brand, she charged her with “reinventing direct selling for the next generation,” recalled Poccia, global president, Mark.

At the time, Mark was a two-year brand at roughly $70 million in size — and the age-old direct sales technique of traipsing through the neighborhood, ringing doorbells, had lost relevance, as many housewives had hung up the apron long ago to enter the workforce.

“Some 123 years ago, the representative would go door to door, geography to geography, selling to her friends and family — her social network,” said Poccia. “Mark is taking direct selling from door to door, to [Facebook’s] wall to wall.”

The shift, she added, “now positions Mark as a leading online beauty and fashion boutique.”

It also takes much of the effort out of the selling process. In addition to its efforts online, Mark issues 13 magalogues each year, distributing more than 100 million brochures annually.

To access the online boutique, Facebook members go to the Mark Girl page — where there are more than 81,000 fans — and click on the “Shop” tab, which reveals Mark’s virtual storefront. The widget currently features a photo of brand spokeswoman Lauren Conrad and Mark’s holiday gift guide. If the user places an item into the cart and proceeds to check out, she can then click, “Find a Mark Rep.” Once there, the user can choose to type in a friend’s name, who is a representative, or search for a representative by zip code.

A gift promotion at Charlotte Russe.

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Launch Slideshow 1 image

Online merchants on Tuesday said they were “pleased” by Cyber Monday sales, with a few reporting double-digit increases over last year. However, traffic to the top 500 retail Web sites was down 9 percent on Monday compared with last year, reported Experian Hitwise.

Amazon.com was the most visited of the top 500 sites, said Hitwise. Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and J.C. Penney were next.

An Amazon spokeswoman also described the company as “very pleased” with Cyber Monday sales. Amazon offered diamond-studded earrings at 70 percent off, and Endless gave discounts of 30 percent off boots, slippers and accessories. Boots from Hunter, Belle by Sigerson Morrison and Minnetonka were bestsellers. Stuart Weitzman was another popular brand. The company has been updating its Facebook page with promotions and style suggestions, she said.

“We were pleased with Cyber Monday,” said Gerald Barnes, president and chief executive officer of Neiman Marcus Direct. “It is a good day in terms of volume, but it isn’t one of our biggest days. Our biggest days come in the second week of December.”

The company had a four-day promotion of “surprises for you,” culminating with a butterfly-themed online hunt for gift cards hidden on the site on Monday.

Gift items have been selling well this season, including men’s gloves and an exclusive $25 zebra-stripe toy gun that shoots marshmallows. The company talks about promotions and special events on its Facebook page.

At GSI Commerce, which runs e-commerce sites for 100 clients, sales were “unequivocally up,” said executive vice president of strategy and marketing Fiona Dias. Customers include Ralph Lauren, Quiksilver, Charlotte Russe and Burberry.

“Cyber Monday has typically been a work shopping holiday, when between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., people in offices across every time zone hopped online and bought stuff,” she said. But Monday, in response to special offers, the shopping started at 6 a.m. and ended at midnight.

“Usually sales taper off in the evening, but [Monday] our biggest hour might have been 9 or 10 p.m.,” said Dias. “It means customers don’t have to shop only from work, we have broadband connections at home now.”

In addition, based on its experience with the newly acquired private-sale site Rue La La, GSI advised all its clients to offer online-only limited-time sales as well as free shipping, to send out reminder e-mails and constantly update the creative on the homepage all day long to say “six hours left,” “four hours left,” etc.

“That urgency gets consumers to convert from browsing to buying,” she said.

While exact numbers are not yet in, based on fulfillment operations, GSI expects Cyber Monday will probably turn out to be its biggest sales day of the holiday season. For the four-day period from Thanksgiving through Sunday, same-store sales were up 17 percent year-over-year. Cyber Monday is GSI’s biggest sale day so far this season.

During the company’s peak minute Monday, it took 789 orders, which was 60 percent more than it took during its peak minute last year.

“Net-net, we had a very high volume yesterday,” said Dias.