How luxury fashion e-commerce site Matchesfashion.com plans to make online and offline buying seamless
Matchesfashion.com describes its soon-to-open bricks-and-mortar operation as the website brought to life. The six-floor concept space in London’s Mayfair will include retail, an events space and three floors of private shopping suites
After experiencing incredible growth online, e-commerce retailers such as Amazon, Alibaba and digital brands such as Warby Parker have recently begun opening bricks-and-mortar stores.
These are not your average shops, however, but retail experiments to disrupt the way we shop as these digital companies try to figure out how to let customers switch seamlessly between online and offline and thus become truly “omnichannel” – a buzzy concept that all retail CEOs have on their mind these days.
In the luxury sphere, the need to create a special experience in physical stores is even more pressing. While brands such as Burberry have tried in the past to incorporate technology in their boutiques, it has not always worked the way they envisioned it.
Farfetch, a luxury fashion marketplace, has long been talking about its “store of the future”, especially after acquiring London boutique Browns, but we have yet to see what that really entails.
Matchesfashion.com, which started as a physical store in London in 1987 and is now a competitor to e-commerce sites such as Net-a-Porter, is getting in on the act with the opening of Carlos Place, a six-storey space in the heart of London’s Mayfair.
