You know? One day some entrepreneur is gonna figure out how to combine the experience of Mall Shopping for ladies with the cost efficiency and speed of on-line buying.
A Big Box Emporium that co-locates “see-touch-feel-wear” convenience of various clothing from a variety of on-line sources, coupled with the ability to transmit all the needed information to a home email address so they can order online at home..
Things like that have been tried. Online clothing works very well for a young demographic, but as people age and start developing odd bulges, it becomes literally impossible to buy anything without trying it on and probably having alterations done. And the bulging generation has all the money - you can go broke fast selling cheap stuff to kids.
Coldwater Creek got lazy - like many retailers they started manufacturing in Asia, then decided it was cheaper to just buy existing styles that looked pretty good and had decent material without taking the time to focus carefully on their own fit and design. As a result, things that looked good in the catalog looked terrible on the body. We'll see a whole bunch more major retailers heading out of business soon for the same reason. Their corporate parent companies forgot how they became successful and squeezed out a couple of dollars extra profit per garment for a season or two - until the public (who is never as stupid as management thinks) caught on.