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RetailX, Feelunique & Alexandre Meerson – Luxury and Beauty Sectors: best bits

Watch our latest RetailX & Guests webinar on demand now for a punchy discussion exploring the dynamics of the luxury and beauty sectors, as each responds to the challenges, changes and opportunities brought about by the pandemic. 

During the webinar, Ian Jindal was joined by industry experts who helped elaborate on the topic based on their personal experiences, behind the scenes insight and authoritative analysis. We hope you enjoyed learning about the intricacies of the beauty and luxury markets – from ‘skinimalism’ through to paradoxical bots – just as much as we did!

In case you missed our wonderful chat, here are some of the key takeaways…

Sophie Howard-Gall, Customer Success Manager at Loqate opened up an interesting discussion on new trends in the luxury sector.

“We’ve had this sort of shift in gifting and consumers don’t want to just gift a bunch of flowers anymore – it kind of feels like we’re overcompensating for the lack of physical contact and actually we’re wanting to gift more luxury items or gift something that’s a bit more meaningful. 

“In the loqate Fixing Failed Delivery Report, 70% of consumers say that they want to shop with vendors or retailers that have a very simple border completion form,” she shares; reminding us that it is in fact, difficult to send items to multiple locations through a single online transaction.

To discover more about how Loqate’s services could help your business, download our white paper exploring the value of enhanced data location here

Ting-Ting Lee, Head of Marketplace at Feelunique.com told us about the retailer’s marketplace and how brands can become a partner. 

“We’ve seen circa 700% growth year on year in the marketplace,” she says, adding that through expanding their core categories, the retailer has been able to help support niche  independent brands who may not get supported in the beauty space normally. 

Lee also illustrated for us, the changes in consumer behaviour Feelunique saw over lockdown: including a new demand for nail products due to closed salons; a growth in self-care products as people were able to spend more time on themselves and unsurprisingly, an increase in healthy living products.

“We also acquired a lot of new customers over this period…historically an older customer who was probably reluctant to move online suddenly had no choice and overall found the experience pretty painless.” 

Moshe Winegarten, SVP Commercial UK at Checkout.com delved into “the convergence of digital into physical” and the positive changes emerging from this in retail. 

“We’re also seeing a kind of demand from the retailers/ businesses/restaurants themselves because they’ve experienced the benefits of online trading um the data it gives them. For example, on what the consumers like most; what dish is popular; what item is popular and tracking the stock…”

He adds that the ‘“real-time control” the mobile-based experience enables, gives the consumer more freedom than ever before when it comes to the physical world. 

“I think what the pandemic has done is really made people now see their phones or other devices as a lens through which they understand and get to control their world.” 

Daisy Anderson, Commercial Manager at Klarna spoke to us about the shift online and which beauty brands have best risen to the challenge. 

“Charlotte Tilbury have done an incredible job – they allowed shoppers to have free consultations online and from that they actually saw massive increases in buy-in of new shoppers. They’ve been able to acquire new shoppers and I think that’s really exciting. It shows they were able to adapt to this gap in the market.” 

Alexandre Meerson, Creative Director & Luxury Brands Advisor at Meerson Watches expressed his opinion on delivering a personalised customer experience online and the plans for his business post pandemic. 

“I think there is kind of a bizarre paradox in thinking that a business which is highly consultation based in store would suddenly be accelerated by bots, it’s quite irrational.

“I am going to focus all of my energy in building more relationships with clients and more occasions to interact. The second step is to go direct in store; in other words, be even more present than I was before in retail.

“We have to acknowledge that the narrative around how you purchase the product and how you got to discover that product, is nowadays more important than the product itself.” 

For further insight from our expert guests on the complex and wonderful worlds of beauty and luxury, watch the full webinar on demand now!

Please submit your questions or comments to: webinar@internetretailing.net.

Download the Luxury Sector Report 2021: https://internetretailing.net/retailx-sector-reports

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