DALLAS, Aug 1, 2006/ FW/ --- In a study released Monday by Research & Markets; it was revealed that in the UK, by the end of 2006, e-tailing will be worth 26 billion pounds and will be 10% of total retail.

UK e-tailing in total is estimated to be running at a monthly rate which is now in excess of 2 billion pounds each month and fashion has a big share in it.

And while the rest of the UK continues to embrace the web, London Fashion Week’s reluctance to trust the online media is baffling at best. Because, although its three sister fashion cities – New York, Milan and Paris – already have a contingency of online journalists attending the season, the opinion that LFW is ‘unfriendly to the internet’ has not changed.

Perhaps, it is because of the bad rap that the internet received with the burst of the dotcom bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Maybe, it is because counterfeiters and copiers use the internet to transfer data, and the web is being blamed for it.

But, the fact is that according to The World Fact Book, as of 2005, there are 1,018,057,389 people connected online, with the number growing everyday. The virtual world has become a reflection of the real world; wherein a certain segment of the population is crooks and criminals. So, giving blanket blame to the internet for the proliferation of counterfeiters and copiers is not only unfair, but also entirely wrong.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that the reason these counterfeiters and copiers are discovered and caught faster is that the police are doing their jobs better with the help of technology?

Like every new invention, the internet cuts like a double-edged sword. The internet is A TOOL; it is NOT ALIVE, nor it can make decisions. It is the user, meaning people, whose actions are either good or bad.

During the internet’s infancy, the average user has a college education. As it became more popular, the average user of the internet today has a Grade 12 education. And, if you really think about it, all established media – print and television – write articles and produce shows based on a readership and/or audience that has a Grade 8 level of education. So, the online world is slowly moving to the same statistics of the ‘real world.’

For those who like the idea of a ‘democratized internet, this is good; however, those who believe that the internet is still an ‘exclusive club,’ they would say this is bad. It is a matter of point of view.

Still, no one can deny that currently, over 75% of U.S. households have internet connection and 75% of the U.S. population goes online, making it a big clearinghouse of information.

With almost the whole U.S. demographics – from the ‘internet generation’ to baby boomers as members of the web population, the chances of reaching them via the internet is high. In short, for a marketer, whether general or niche, the opportunities are great, if not limitless.

Again, from The World Fact Book, the UK ranked 6th in the world as a country with 37,800,000 online population as of 2005. The US is first, followed by China, Japan, India and Germany, in that order. The UK is ahead of Italy and France, both of whom are ranked 8th and 9th at the end of 2005, respectively.

So maybe… just maybe, the internet can be an asset for London Fashion Week, as it continues its quest to regain the glitter it once had as a fashion capital.

And, hopefully, it will be soon, because London has a lot of design talents that are currently being eclipsed because they do not get the media attention they deserve.