Retail Asia 2018 RA September.October 2018 (Online) | Page 21
SPECIAL REPORT
Gucci recently announced a new organisational structure, including a vice president of Brand
& Customer Engagement who is dedicated to engaging consumers with a global community.
valuable logo.
The industry’s challenge is to
maintain premium pricing and the
intangible allure of brands.
Looking forward:
organisational implications
The critical issue for businesses in
the personal luxury goods industry is
how to adapt their organisations to a
challenging landscape.
A shift from Communication to
Consumer Engagement has to be built
into the entire ecosystem — connecting
product design, development and
supply to consumers, giving them
exactly what they want, when and how
they want it. Relationships need to be
dynamic, leveraging the most advanced
technologies and appealing both to
millennials and other generations. Fresh
content is key: video clips, music, social
media and events can all help to build
buzz.
This realisation may be one of the
reasons why Gucci recently announced
a new organisational structure,
including a vice president of Brand
& Customer Engagement who is
dedicated to engaging consumers with
a global community. Larger groups and
companies may be able to afford this
more easily, but there are opportunities
for smaller brands to achieve better
visibility.
In parallel, the commercial
approach requires reorganisation.
Businesses need to stop thinking of
channels in silos; the old divisions
between channels are no longer
sustainable. To serve clients efficiently,
each territory around the world should
be covered with the right mix of
synergistic channels.
To address the digital
transformation challenge, organisations
could look at third-party alliances as
one way of importing skills quickly.
This is what Chanel has decided
to achieve through a strategic
partnership with Farfetch, initially
focused on technologies to enhance
Chanel’s physical store experience
with “Augmented Retail”. Once new
capabilities are established, brands can
consider bringing them in-house.
We see an opportunity for big
groups to create a central competence
centre, able to exploit economies of
scale and competence across their
organisations. Such taskforces could
support and empower local initiatives
by sharing specialist resources and
best practices. Stand-alone brands,
meanwhile would be forced to build
everything up.
The rules of the game have changed
and we have yet to discover the winners
and losers. We believe that businesses
cannot wait and see what happens as
fundamental changes take effect in
the personal luxury goods market. But
there is no one-size-fits-all solution —
brands have to find their own way. ra
Chanel has
decided to
achieve digital
transformation
through a strategic
partnership with
Farfetch, initially
focused on
technologies to
enhance Chanel’s
physical store
experience with
“Augmented
Retail”.
Retail Asia September/October 2018
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