Boutique in Hand

By Michiko Toyama/Tokyo

WHILE MORE and more Americans expand their wardrobes with the click of a mouse, the Japanese are a step ahead, buying clothes on their cell phones. It's almost exactly the same as shopping on a computer, just smaller and more mobile.

In tech-savvy Japan, cell-phone commerce is an $83 billion industry. The leader is Xavel, which launched girlswalker.com the first free-of-charge cell-phone consumer portal. Six years later, it's the country's most popular cell-phone shopping site, garnering 100 million hits a day. Its partner, girlsauction.com boasts 1.5 million members and $43 million in monthly cell-phone transactions. "If I was going to do business, I was going to do it with women in their 20s and 30s," says CEO Fumitaro Ohama. "I wondered why nobody thought of it, considering they are such a huge market."

Another thing nobody thought of was a buy-it-as-you-see-it fashion show. In August, Ohama, 34, threw Japan's largest fashion event to date, the Tokyo Girls Collection. The 12,600 attendees--and 15 million people watching the live cell-phone broadcast--could purchase items on their phones as soon as they appeared on the catwalk. Shin Akamatsu launched his Joias line at the festival and received more orders than the established labels did. "We struck gold right from the beginning," says the creative director, who saw $4.2 million in sales in five months. Other brands plan to present new lines at the next event.

Also catching on is Japan's eBay, Rakuten. Cell-phone sales account for 34% of its transactions. "Cell-phone companies realized the potential, so we too started taking cell-phone commerce seriously," says spokeswoman Kuniko Narita. "Our turnover increased drastically."

The Japanese aren't just shopping on cell phones but also with them. A new "wallet cell phone" functions as a credit, debit or ID card, among other things. The handset has a computer chip similar to that found in electronic key cards. Japanese girls are buying mascara, mints and magazines at convenience stores simply by swiping their phones past a scanner near the cash register.

So what's next? "People have started buying big things," says Narita. "You can even buy a helicopter or a $3.2 million tanzanite gem on a cell phone."