The future of shopping is here, with app that gets online fashion purchases from store to your door in 90 minutes, and more
Fashion tech firm Farfetch to roll out Store to Door in 10 cities, and trial second concept offering in-store login that lets you add clothes on the racks to a wish list, smart mirrors to view online selections and holographs to customise shoes
Thanks to a partnership with London-based fashion technology company Farfetch, customers in 10 cities around the world will soon be able to get Gucci clothing and accessories whisked to their door within 90 minutes.
Farfetch announced the partnership on Wednesday, as the company showcases what it’s calling “The Store of the Future” – software and devices that aim to help luxury brands gather more information on customers in stores and online.
Customers will be able to shop for selected items of Gucci goods via Farfetch’s app and website, and have those orders fulfilled within 90 minutes from Gucci stores in London, New York, Dubai, Los Angeles, Madrid, Miami, Milan, Paris, Sao Paulo and Tokyo.
The Gucci collaboration with Farfetch comes as competition heats up in online luxury. In a call with investors this week, LVMH’s chief financial officer, Jean-Jacques Guiony, said the world’s largest luxury group would be the latest to ramp up multi-brand e-commerce, considering a new site for its luxury department store Le Bon Marché.
“Retailers need a way to collect information about their customers while they are browsing in-store, just as they collect data from online searches,” Jose Neves, Farfetch’s founder and chief executive officer, said.
Founded in 2008 as an e-commerce platform for luxury boutiques, Farfetch has increasingly positioned itself as a technology provider working directly with high-end brands. In March, it launched the e-commerce portal for high-end shoe designer Manolo Blahnik, pushing into a space where competitor Yoox Net-A-Porter has been a leader, operating white-label websites for brands including Yves Saint Laurent and Armani.
Among the in-store technologies Farfetch is showcasing is a scanner that will enable customers to “log in” with a smartphone when they enter a store, allowing a sales assistant to view the customer’s profile, including what items they may have bought previously or saved to a wish list in the brand’s online store.
A clothing rack has been designed to record what items the customer picks up, and store the item on an app on the customer’s phone as well as for the retailer. The customer can later swipe left or swipe right to move items to a wish list. A smart mirror in stores will enable shoppers to move between browsing the online and in-store selections, Gavin Williams, a Farfetch director of product development, said.
The company is also showcasing a holographic display that will enable customers to create and order customised shoes – experimenting with different leathers, skins and colours – from luxury brand Nicholas Kirkwood.
The technology, which Farfetch is calling Store of the Future, will be rolled out later this year at luxury boutique Browns in London, which Farfetch bought in 2015, and the flagship Thom Browne store in New York.
