1) Why should anyone care about solving the problems that the writer of this article wants to see solved?
2) She fixates on the 3-8% that affiliate sites make without considering a few things:
a) Sites make that regardless of where the user actually buys. So if someone comes to your site and decides to buy a jacket you make money whether they buy it from Retailer A or Retailer B.
b) It's usually 10% for fashion sites and once you are driving larger volume you can cut deals for 15%.
c) If you become the decision engine (something Google and Bing are trying to do with their Flight Search and other initiatives in various verticals), then you can easily take over the entire business.
If people are coming to you and you help them decide what to buy - then you can start selling them that stuff.
3) The costs and barrier to entry is much lower if you are trying to fix the discoverability problem.
4) The real problem, and the most important thing, is the role of fashion. What fashion really does. That can be tackled completely in the online world through a website.
5) Fashion is a market that is going to make a lot of startups a lot of money.
Things that signal status (such as special electronic brands and designer bags and Grey Goose vodka) are never going to go out of style.
Instead of listening to this writer's advice, any company going into fashion should look at how backward thinking most people in the industry are, how little they understand technology, and how they are unwilling to admit the core purpose of fashion.
The easiest entry is discoverability and influence and that's also the most powerful element of the fashion ecosystem.
If you become the discovery engine and the decision engine then it's game over for everyone else.
All those VCs funding fashion startups are not idiots.