Levi strategist comes clean about Web failure

The head of Levi's ecommerce strategy hit back at claims that the company recently pulled out of selling jeans over the Web because the site frustrated would-be consumers.

Speaking at Nextravangza, an Internet conference in San Francisco this week, Alisa Weiner, the jeans company's director of ecommerce, said Levi found it expensive to build backend systems to adequately support an ecommerce infrastructure. Instead the manufacturer is providing links to the online stores of US retailers JC Penney and Macys.

She said: "This is far from a retreat - this shift allows us to reduce our investments online," adding that her budget had prohibited her from spending "like a startup".

Weiner admitted that she had tried to persuade her senior managers to spin off Levi.com as a separate entity to attract additional investment but the company's 150 year old culture worked against her.

Levi's move to stop selling jeans directly online attracted huge attention amid customer complaints of slow loading pages and navigational difficulties.

Mark Hurst, president of US ecommerce consultancy Creative Good, said: "Customers shop online for convenience yet Levi.com slows customers down by displaying irrelevant pictures of its pouting models. No wonder Levi.com proved to be a bad return on the company's investments," he said.

But Weiner argued that according to Levi's own research, the site, which is still up and running, has achieved the goals of increasing brand awareness, strengthening its relationships with customers, and creating incremental sales.