Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette Haussmann launches personalised remote shopping

By

Marion Deslandes

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Jun 3, 2020

The boulevard Haussmann flagship of Parisian department store chain Galeries Lafayette has been closed for over two months - though it will reopen soon - but from May 22 the store has been trialling a new way of remote video selling. The ‘Exclusive Live Shopping’ video service links up individual customers at their homes with consultants and personal shoppers physically situated in the department store’s boulevard Haussmann branch in Paris.

The service is active from Monday to Saturday, from 11 am to 7 pm. Customers, both from France and abroad, are required to reserve their video link online. The service is available in several languages. Customers will be able to see the sales consultant (who will not be able to do the same) and orders need to be confirmed by email, with payments made online or by bank transfer. The items purchased can be either delivered at home or are available for click & collect.

The service is focused primarily on the department store's luxury and premium brands, with 120 fashion, beauty and accessories labels participating in the initiative. Among them Balenciaga, Jacquemus, Maje, Bonton, Dior, Isabel Marant and Acne for ready-to-wear, and Sisley, Diptyque, Fresh and Nars for cosmetics.

“Top brands have enthusiastically signed up to this initiative, which had very tight deadlines,” said Alexandre Liot, store director of Galeries Lafayette Haussmann. “The unprecedented crisis we are living through has forced us to bring into play a high degree of flexibility and creativity. We have a very clear goal: making the range of products from our boulevard Haussmann flagship available to the widest possible audience, outside our walls,” added Liot. A move that should prove attractive also to international customers currently unable to travel to Paris.

This omni-channel service is part of the inevitable digital transformation Galeries Lafayette has been working on in the last few years. To do so, the group has tapped the resources of GoInStore, a start-up backed by the Lafayette Plug & Play accelerator, a talent pool of new companies working on the future of retailing.

Galeries Lafayette, like many retailers, has been hit hard by the health emergency, which is causing the group significant losses. On April 28, the boss of Galeries Lafayette and BHV Marais, Nicolas Houzé, estimated the revenue shortfall for 2020 at €1 billion.