ASOS CEO Nick Robertson was quoted in this week’s New Media Age as saying the following:

“Next year we’ll reintroduce affiliate marketing but as it should be, as opposed to affiliates as they were” said Nick Robertson, ASOS CEO. “(There’ll be) no silly commissions being paid to grubby little people in grubby studios growing income at our expense, getting in the way of genuine sales”

Now, I’m not going to be so daft as to suggest that all affiliate marketers are squeaky clean, but Nick really needs to look in his own back yard for some of the reasons for his displeasure.

ASOS’ affiliate scheme was once held up as a demonstration of how affiliates could build an online brand with their huge reach and expertise in attracting online traffic. However, in it’s latter days ASOS seemed to believe they could have this traffic for free, and cut out many affiliates, lost their top notch affiliate manager, and generally made the proposition far less attractive to the same affiliates that built them.

In short, the programme was mismanaged out of existence and had much the same effect as putting the screws on your own sales force would do.
Nick’s quote, and the piece in general implies that the programme will be relaunched later this year, or maybe 2008, and that the approach to affiliates will be on a more bespoke basis.

Judging by the reaction to the piece on the UK forums, I think he’ll have a hard time finding anyone to touch it.