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If you’ve been following the industry blogs, you’ve likely read about Hearts On Fire’s announcement of its new e-commerce web site.  Not surprisingly, some of its retailers are quite upset, wondering if a supplier is about to become a competitor.  

Disclosure: I wasn’t at Hearts On Fire University this year to hear the debates firsthand, but I’ve written about this topic many times before. Then, it was centered on designers who opened branded full-price retail stores in the same area—often on the same street or in the same mall—as jewelers who carry their brand.  

Historically, retailers in that situation discovered that sales of a particular brand actually go up, not down, when a branded store opens nearby. This phenomenon has held true across a variety of product categories from electronics to shoes to jewelry.  

Why? For one thing, it’s great marketing. It builds greater exposure for the brand, reinforces the brand image by presenting it in the manufacturer’s intended context, and gets the brand in front of twice as many eyeballs, if not more, than if the retailer had to promote it alone.  

While it might lure a few customers away from other retailers if the branded store has a deeper assortment, just as often a customer will use the branded store as a lab and return to a favorite retailer to buy, especially if it nets them loyalty points.  

For example, Coach, Tory Burch, Gucci, Stuart Weitzman, and David Yurman, among others, all have branded stores at the Plaza in King of Prussia, PA. But you can still buy Coach, Tory Burch, and Stuart Weitzman at Nordstrom, Gucci at Neiman Marcus, or David Yurman at Bloomingdale’s. If these stores weren’t still selling enough goods from these labels, they’d have dropped the lines long ago.  

The same holds true for Hearts On Fire’s foray into the cybermall. If history is any kind of indicator, having an online presence is likely to drive consumers into its network of local retailers, not poach them away from it. Since HOF’s leading product is bridal jewelry, and the primary customers for bridal jewelry are the Millennials, and the primary method of messaging for that cohort is online, it would be silly for any brand—or retailer—targeting that group not to be where they are.

The Internet has shifted the paradigm for many industries, not just retail or jewelry. And when a paradigm shifts, there are two choices: turn it to your advantage or expend energy fighting it, only to be left behind anyway.

The Internet isn’t going to kill brick-and-mortar retailers. But it can do some pretty heavy damage to those who spend more energy fighting it than figuring out how to harness it to their advantage. It is possible for a high-end retailer to harness it successfully, Neiman Marcus being the most famous example.

This article on Mashable.com discusses how some very high-end fashion designers are successfully tapping into the Internet to promote their wares. In “Rules of Engagement,” above, industry experts Carrie Soucy, Cindy Edelstein, and Ellen Fruchtman also weigh in on strategies you can use successfully, even if you don’t have a staff of cyber-wizards at your disposal.

Remember similar outcries over TV shopping and branded jewelry? Both found their place, retailers learned to prosper within the new paradigm, and I believe that’s what will happen with branded e-commerce sites. To paraphrase the great Bard, in a few years it’ll all seem like much ado about, well, nothing. 

By Hedda Schupak, Editor, The Centurion