Chanel Will Promote Cooperation With Luxury Electric Business Farfetch

In February 2018, the French classic luxury brand Chanel (Chanel) announced the acquisition of a minority stake in British fashion electronics Farfetch, and reached a long-term cooperative relationship. Farfetch will help Chanel's physical store create a new digital shopping experience.

In April last year, Chanel launched a pilot operation in a digital store at the flagship store in the Kang Peng street, France, and achieved a good response. Now Chanel plans to extend the project to three stores in the first half of this year, including two flagship stores in France, and a department store in Paris, which will open before and after the end of June.

Chanel the French flagship store is the largest boutique in France, with an area of 1000 square meters. About half of its customers are tourists. In the two floor of the flagship store, it has four state-of-the-art high-tech locker rooms, with a transparent digital mirror in the dressing room. Chanel also launched a customer APP and a shop assistant APP to create a seamless hi-tech journey, boutique tour and private shopping tour, to enhance customer and staff contacts and save customers' time.

Customers do not need to call to make an appointment to consult a particular commodity. Just download APP, you can contact the brand consultant at any time online, you can also preview and select products online, and save more time. At the same time, shop assistants only need to scan their customers' mobile phones through their own APP, so that they can get relevant information, including customers trying on and trying out commodities, the size of the merchandise, visiting the history of physical stores and online shopping, and controlling the inventory of goods in real time, so as to provide more shopping suggestions for customers.

Finally, it is a digital "mirror" full of technology. It has RFID technology to identify clothes that customers bring into the fitting room, so customers can watch the video or video of selected products in the mirror. At the same time, this mirror can also directly display the details of the merchandise. If the customer is not satisfied, the clerk will delete the product online directly, thus saving the number and time of the clerk to pick up the goods.

The project covers all 8 Chanel series except Gao Ding fashion, allowing customers to choose from several fashion shows and multi season series.

In the expansion plan of the project, these technologies will mainly be applied to those Chanel boutiques which are not very large.

A Chanel employee, who declined to be named, explained: "for me, this is the collision between Chanel's excellent retail and Farfetch's outstanding digital products. We believe that in 10 or 20 years, luxury shopping will still take place in boutiques. We want to consider future customers, so we experimented with this new customer experience. This is a test and learning method. "

This creative project has not even been officially named. Employees of Chanel and Farfetch call it "The Pilot (Trial sailing)", "The Fitting Room of the Future (future fitting room"), or even "Magic (mirror)".

Sandrine Deveaux, head of Store of the Future, Farfetch retail innovation business division, said: "please don't say this is just a magic mirror. It's far more than that! It includes everything from application to shopping trip. It's better to call it Augmented Retail Experience (enhance retail experience)?

Sandrine Deveaux added: "for Farfetch, this is a very important moment, because Chanel is a great cooperation brand. We have similar vision, all hope to use seamless technology to enhance customer experience, and play the power of fashion consultants.

When asked about the trial run, two Chanel salesmen admitted that the technology had made them feel pain, but it did give customers a better understanding of the Chanel brand and its products. Chanel shop assistant, for example, "a local customer who has been following Chanel for five years wants to buy a belt. Since we have many different styles of leather belts in fashion shows, I had to show her different ways of wearing each belt. After having the magic mirror, she tried on the belt according to the picture on the mirror, and finally bought two pieces. She had never thought of buying two.

Sandrine Deveaux added: "how to attract high-end customers from accessories to ready-made garments is an important task for Chanel." Although Chanel did not disclose how much the project has brought to sales, it stressed that it helps to find the right choice for everyone.

The Farfetch platform brings together 700 luxury boutiques in the world, and actively investing to enhance the offline shopping experience of boutique partners who are entering the platform. Especially after the acquisition of London boutique buyer Browns in 2015, Farfetch has been studying the technological upgrading of stores. (see "ornate ambition" report: fashion business new Farfetch purchase British classic buyer Browns) although Farfetch and Chanel have reached an exclusive agreement, but London boutique buyer shop Browns moved to Brooks Street's new site, will also implant these technologies.