The London scene of luxury insiders came together on October 11th for the Walpole Luxury eBusiness Forum. With participants from Links of London, Yoox, De Beers, Hackett, Smythson, Business of Fashion, Facebook, and many others, it was an international event with a distinctly British feel. Walpole, a non-profit dedicated to “furthering the interests of the British luxury industry” aims to foster a community among UK luxury professionals and facilitate business development across the world.
The first guest speaker of the day was Imran Amed of Business of Fashion fame, speaking on the topic of how the digital revolution is transforming fashion. The key message was that today media is an active social conversation where consumers have the control, not the brands. Brands need to recognize that the way they are defined is in the minds of the consumer, not by a brand’s communication team. Sharing interesting details on the Coach e-commerce business was David Duplantis, the brand’s EVP of Global Digital Media & Consumer Engagement. Coach.com has been around since 1997, rolling out e-commerce very early on in 1999. In 2010, e-commerce sales doubled over the year before and are trending to meet the same benchmark for 2011. Online reviews have played a big role in Coach’s online business: products with ratings and reviews enabled sold 2x as much as those without. Interesting as well was that Coach relies heavily on blogger relations, even employing someone full time just to manage these relationships. Coach aims to treat bloggers as partners of the brand, an approach that has been successful thus far.
Martin Gill of Forrester Research gave an excellent talk on the future of retail, highlighting the mobile, social, and personal differences shaping the shopping experience today. Mobile shopping is still in its infancy in Europe with only 2% of the population having made a purchase on their phone, as compared to 13% in the US and a whopping 45% in Asia. As a result of increased mobile access and pre-purchase online research, multi-channel marketing is key. In a panel discussion around the skills needed to be a successful online shopkeeper, a debate took place.
Michael Ross of eCommera spoke about how running a brick and mortar store has nothing to do with the skills needed to run an e-commerce business. Michael Ward of Harrods countered that today in-store selling has become just as dynamic and data-driven as e-commerce. Roger Brown of Peerius bridged the gap by maintaining that merchandising remains a key skill both online and off. Counterfeiting is a huge issue for the luxury industry and a hot topic at Walpole involved how to protect brands online. Simon Tracey of law firm Mishcon de Reya provided some valuable insights. Intercepting fakes at port used to be an important way to combat counterfeits entering the system. With e-commerce, fakes are coming in to the country via parcel post, making it harder to physically block the movement of counterfeits. So what can brands do against online counterfeiters? ”Don’t leave gaps, own all of your online web URLs and screen names, and invest in SEO.”
The last presentation of the day focused on China. Fiona Paterson from thecorner.com shared insights about their recently launched Chinese site, thecorner.cn. In an effort to reduce fraudulent behavior, all garments are tagged with RFID, something specifically implemented for the Chinese business. It’s clear that there is a great potential in terms of online luxury retail in China, where the consumer is immensely wealthy and also very digitally minded.
Overall, this was a well-organized event with time for questions and networking. For other upcoming events in the digital luxury space, be sure to read up on the 8 Must-Attend Global Luxury Digital Events.
Photo Credits: www.thewalpole.co.uk
