Global e-commerce platform Farfetch and French luxury house Chanel has teamed up to develop a branded app and plan to create a personalized in-store experience and to target better millennials as reported by Financial Times.

“To be clear, Chanel will not be selling on Farfetch, nor are we launching ecommerce,” Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel, told the Financial Times. “This deal is about accelerating and enriching the experience of the client before and after their visit the boutique.”

Mr Pavlovsky described 2017 as the brand’s “best year ever”. The company was founded by the Portugal-born entrepreneur José Neves in 2008. The collaboration for the company’s reputation means partnership to luxury brands and their commitment to improving bricks-and mortar services.

“It’s an innovation deal,” said Mr Neves. “We’re hoping to change the shape of retail, and improve a customer experience which is currently stuck in the nineties.”
The app described by Mr.Neves will do the following:
“It will mean a client from Shanghai, who spends $2m a year in a boutique there, will be able to go into a store in Los Angeles and have the staff know who they are, what they want, and the sizes they need. It might mean also, if they are a high net client, they can arrange, if they want, to have a fitting arranged.” But it can also mean, “The app will also offer a ‘do not disturb’ feature, which ensures clients are left alone.”

“Fashion cannot be totally digitized,” he said. “Between 75-80 per cent of fashion sales are still undertaken in bricks-and-mortar stores. And that won’t change. The store still offers an experience you cannot get online: the relationship with the staff; the story; the touch and feel of the products. But what needs to change is the way stores interact with clients.”

Chanel, which has never shared customer details with outside sources, is being extremely cautious about overstepping the bounds of consumer trust. “I want to be very clear,” said Mr Pavlovsky. “This is not about changing the posture of Chanel. We will only do what the client wants to do. And we will only move at their pace. This is not Big Brother. This is Chanel.”

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