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The luxury customer wants to be coddled much more: Desirée Bollier
Summary
Value Retail’s chair Desirée Bollier, which runs the popular Bicester Villages, explains that customers want superfluous service, hospitality and a fantastic retail experience
Post covid one thing every shopper learnt was that they could buy everything, well, almost everything, online. That switch to the swipe of the phone has continued to push several luxury brands as well as retail stores to step up their game and offer something new, something different.
New and different is what Value Retail, the UK-based owner of a dozen open-air luxury shopping destinations in Europe, the US and China, is always working on. The shopping destinations, referred to as villages, offer last season’s stock at 40% off original prices, besides a smattering of latest products. “Today, you can Amazon anything. So, you have to constantly think about what it will take to get the customer out of the house," says Desirée Bollier, the chair and global chief merchant of Value Retail. “You have give them more than a shopping experience."
The villages are essentially catering to the travelling customer who’s a fashion loyalist but doesn’t want a transactional relationship with luxury. Over a span of 30 years, they have built a strong following. The Bicester Village, the first ever outpost started in 1995 in the UK, now has about seven million visitors a year and is the second most popular destination for Chinese tourists in Britain after Buckingham Palace. It generates among the highest sales per square foot of any shopping mall in the world. This year, they launched the third edition of the Unlock Her Future Prize to South Asian countries, including India and Pakistan, inviting women social entrepreneurs to share their ideas and win financial support and guidance from mentors.
Indians are among its top five visitors. In an interview, Bollier talks about the idea behind the villages and what the retail luxury customer wants. Edited excerpts:
It’s been 30 years of the Bicester Village. How has the brand evolved?
If you look at the evolution of the brand, when Scott started in 1995, we were called Chic Outlet Shopping. It was chic to use the word “chic" at the time and generated a sense of curiosity. Later on, it became obvious that we had to drop the word “outlet" because people would often associate the word “outlet" with cheap. So, we started focusing on “shopping destination". Then, we realised we did not need the word shopping anymore; we really wanted to focus on the fact that this is a destination—you want to come, eat, have fun and shop. Shopping is one of the activities, not one of the main activity.
Now, interesting enough, we saw this in our customer behaviour. Happy, they eat well, their dwell time increases. When dwell time increases, your walk in the street becomes longer and the temptation is right there. You start seeing one window, then second, then third. You are like, “Okay, I could really see how my wardrobe could look like".
Also read: In luxury, you create a need. You don’t respond to a need: Breitling CEO
The customer has also changed tremendously...
Things changed tremendously post covid. Socio-economically, inflation.... Brands also multiplied the price of their goods twice, three times. The same consumer who used to feel rich felt poor post-covid. They were like, ‘Do I really want to spend that amount of money on this bag?’ Also, quality became a big question. There was a lot of conversation on how and why a lot of luxury products did not feel as premium as they were claiming to be.
It’s not that the quality had changed, but for that same price, you would expect the quality to double. It’s not that the product became cheaper (in quality). It’s that the customer is demanding more for that price because they’ve become informed. This is where the disconnect has come between a shopper and brands.
What’s interesting to observe, and we see it in the Bicester collection as well, the guest is really looking for superfluous experiences. Good customer service is no longer good enough. Superfluous service is unreasonable hospitality. If it’s not seamless, they are annoyed, and they don’t know why. So, it made us build all our services in a way that would satisfy that guest. And I see it with the Indian customer especially. They take it for granted, the service here. Within seconds, they expect that somebody’s going to pull a chair before they sit down.
Who are your customers?
There are two things happening right now. One, you get about 40% off on last year’s collection. We also allow brands to showcase their current season’s best sellers. And with that, we’ve noticed that up to 30% of the sales generated by that store are from the iconic product. It tells you the guests we’re attracting are not just bargain hunters. They really are coming for an experiential retail. Price probably is the cherry on the cake; not the cake itself. The cake itself is the journey. It’s arriving on the train, it’s getting picked up by a car, it’s the hands-free shopping.
So, the customer service has to be customised for every consumer?
Yes, if luxury really wants to go back on track. I think LVMH has started to do it, with the main house Dior creating not just a boutique, but an experiential boutique. There is the museum, there is the cafe, there is actually what you guys, in India, instinctively have done. Take Sabyasachi’s Mumbai store. When you go inside, all your senses are engaged, visual, olfactive, tactile; you are immersed in his world.
Also read: Why luxury watchmaker Franck Muller wants to expand in India
It’s about the emotion and not transaction...
If it’s just transactional, it doesn’t make you feel great. You could buy it online in two seconds. You want transaction? Stay home. However, you’re human, and what do you want when you’re a human? Community, contact, personal touch, something that makes you feel like a million bucks.... The customer wants to be coddled much more, especially the younger lot whose attention span is nanoseconds.
Given the rise in interest in experiential shopping, do you believe shopping malls will eventually die?
Yes and no. Let me explain why I'm saying yes.
There are people who are doing malls extremely well. Like, the SKP mall in China. They've managed to really do this mix of food, art, fashion and the guests feel comfortable in an indoor space that really actually speaks to them. They have about 35 restaurants. They've definitely understood the psyche of that Chinese customer and what they want.
In China, we have 15-16 restaurants per village because we understood the Chinese customer eats all day. They eat noodles at 7am, but they also can eat them at 11am, 12, or 4 in the evening. The breakfast-lunch-dinner thing is a European concept.
The no is for the ones that are not doing that well because they have made it a soulless experience. You can't find anybody to even say hello when you get inside these brands. The brands themselves are all the same no matter what mall you go in.
And what happens then? You're like, wait a minute. I would stay home and buy Amazon. At least you're having a glass of wine while you're doing it. It's not you that didn't want to go to the malls. It's that the malls have taken you for granted and destroyed your experience. And what happens with that? You chose not to go anymore. It's forgetting who they're catering for. The guests, the customer.
At the core of everything, hotels, malls, fashion, retail, who is driving that business? You, the customer, the guest. They need to seduce you for you to come back and come back again, but when they take you for granted, this is where everything starts falling apart. It's already happening in the US, and they turning into gyms, housing.
It might happen in India as well if they don't evolve because brands will start disappearing from the mall.
So that mall that used to be in A++ will become a C++, and a new concept will have to be created for that A++ demanding customer.
Also read: Inside the closets of India's rich
