The new Solihull branch of designer fashion store Serene Order is aiming to offer its A-list customers a seamlessly fused mix of both online and in-store retailing at its new boutique.
Serene Order’s new store includes an innovative Catwalk Click service. This enables customers to view the latest catwalk shows on large TV screens in the store’s ground floor lounge, before moving up to the first floor where they can browse and order the collections they have just viewed downstairs from the sereneorder.com website. Orders are then quickly delivered to the store’s fitting rooms ready for trying-on.
The sereneorder.com website also supports the Personal Shopping service provided by the store’s management team, where high-profile customers can request personal exhibitions of new fashion items in their home.
“We have brought together the traditional form of in-store shopping and internet to provide our customers with an exciting, technology-enriched shopping experience,” says founder Nad Ahmed. “We knew that many of our customers shopped online as well as visiting our store and we thought there was no reason why the two channels should be mutually exclusive, so we decided to combine them both in-store with the Catwalk Click service. I believe it’s a UK first for a UK designer fashion store and it’s proving very popular with our customers.”
“We have also found the internet an ideal medium for finding and showcasing new designers that would previously have found it difficult to get noticed,” he added. “But, because we buy direct from designers, we are able to showcase new talent we think fits in with our style and which is not available elsewhere.”
“What Serene Order is doing is really unique,” says Dean Benson, of Serene Order’s supplier Visualsoft. “We have designed more than 70 fashion web sites and most of these businesses are turning increasingly towards the internet and further away from the high street — in fact many of them don’t even have a high street presence. By immersing their store in internet technologies and providing a cutting-edge ecommerce website, Serene Order is maximising the potential of both routes to market in a ground-breaking way. I believe it’s a model which is setting new standards in fashion retailing.”
