Translating the Luxury Experience Digitally

Traditionally luxury brands have long shied away from ecommerce, fearing online retail would dilute the luxury brand’s image and reduce its sense of exclusivity. These brands have also avoided ecommerce due to the perceived lack of control on the quality of the sales environment and on the pricing, especially on third party multi-brand online platforms.

Mass market brands, and to some extent, bridge-to-luxury brands have been able to integrate and adapt to omnichannel with far more ease, whereas luxury brands started out skeptical. But with time, and the pandemic giving everyone a big jolt, luxury brands have started to move towards the world of opportunities that omnichannel retailing offers.

This is where Fynd has made a comfortable entry. Our technology has helped brands take up the omnichannel path while helping these luxury brands maintain their exclusivity and increase revenues.

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Fynd Store was created four years ago to plug the loss-of-sales happening across stores for brands. This loss was majorly due to the unavailability of the proper size, fit, or color, or if the customer was not happy with the offering that particular store had. This accounted for 5–12% of a store’s sales. Since its inception, Fynd Store not only helped ‘save’ this loss-of-sale but also helped enhance the customer’s shopping experience.

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The most common questions asked by luxury brands switching to omnichannel are:

1. How do we reach out to our customers?
2. Is there a platform to view and find our products?
3. How do we ensure that the quality and exclusivity of the online experience is comparable, or even better, than the in-store experience the customers are used to?

Well, these are the few questions we asked ourselves before coming up with a solution to help brands maintain their luxury status while providing customers a satisfactory online experience.

More than just an endless aisle

Although luxury brands started out a bit skeptical, we were able to quickly integrate their vast catalog and inventory helping them adapt to Fynd Store smoothly. With Fynd Store, the store staff could focus more on pitching and sharing the products with the customer, and the cart sharing option was a game-changer. Fynd Store catalog also acts as an ecommerce website for the store teams, as they have the entire brand stock on their fingertips to pitch to customers.

‍Cart Sharing & Distance Selling

Now that the world is wary about safety and hygiene, Fynd Store has helped brands by targeting customers who do not want to come to the store physically to purchase. This saves a lot of time for both the staff who earlier used to visit customer’s city for home shopping, and for the customer who had to make time for these visits. With just a few clicks, a store, or a merchandiser can make a detailed catalogue depending on the mood and wants of the customer. This link which is shared is as good as a complete brand website curated for that particular customer’s tastes.

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Contactless payments

Payment links on Fynd Store are active till the time the product is in stock, unlike other portals where the payment link is active for 5–10 mins. This has worked really well for the staff and the customers. The customer no longer needs to share the card details which makes it easy for the staff to close the sale.

Same-day delivery option

To increase customer satisfaction, we are now able to meet their demands and their excitement to own luxury in just a few hours. The introduction of WeFast and Dunzo in metro cities has helped close sales the same day.

Gifting & Fragile Goods

Many luxury buyers gift products to their relatives or friends in a different city. With the help of Fynd Store, it has now become easier to send gifts to people in different locations. The stores are really happy to get gift wrapping requests! All the customer has to do is add comments in the cart section before confirming the order and the fulfilling team gets it done.

Certain products require extra care and this can be easily communicated to the delivery team with Fynd Store. This ensures the safety of the product and the customer receives the package in perfect condition.

Luxury brands appreciate this level of care, it encourages them to safely rely on the Fynd Store app and use it across all their outlets.

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According to the founder of the Customer Experience Group and luxury industry expert Christophe Caïs, shoppers in the luxury retail space often value the brand experience more than the actual products they purchase. And we already know that in 2021, customer experience has become a more critical brand differentiator than price or the products themselves.

Fynd Store prioritizes creating a seamless customer experience by providing customers who miss walking into their favourite store, to live the same in-store feeling of leisurely looking through those specific products they like, digitally.

If you are a retail business interested in learning more about Fynd Store, visit us at fynd.com, or write to us at brands@fynd.com. We’ve got you covered!

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Thanks to Garima Sharma and Sanjay Kumar Verma.

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This article was previously published on our Building Fynd blog.