2/2 – Second and last part of Eugénie Benhamou’s interview, in which the co-founder of Factonics, startup specialized in data science and artificial intelligence, analyses the technological transformations initiated or reinforced by the Covid-19 crisis for fashion brands and luxury houses.

By Ludmilla Intravaia

Le Boudoir Numérique: In the first part of your interview (read here), you talked about how a technological tool like augmented reality makes buying a luxury product more accessible to young people. With apps and social networks, it's downright a wealth of information on fashion itself that is available to them ...

Eugénie Benhamou, luxury retail and customer experience expert at Factonics: Absolutely. Young people now know the history of fashion and luxury houses like the back of their hands. Generation Z has a very deep, very relevant fashion culture, a behavioral change that has been reinforced during the health crisis. Often, these customers even know the brand better than the salespeople in the shops. This is why houses need effective digital tools to support them in their contacts with these sometimes very young and very demanding clients, in a context where the role of the sales advisor in the luxury sector has completely changed.

What do you mean by that ?

Ten years ago, a salesperson was trained to understand the collections and the history of the house, to know how to talk to customers about materials, etc. Today, he can no longer just present articles, while following a sale ceremony, he must also embody a commercial role because he has to manages his client portfolio, to develop and enrich it on a daily basis. He must communicate, make himself known to customers, keep in contact with them, integrate customer information into the company database, in short, he has become super versatile, in a luxury sector where the turnover of sales advisers being enormous, houses no longer have time to train their new recruits. Digital tools allow salespeople to get to know their customers better and above all, the tool will speak for them. Imagine a customer looking for blue chiffon pants that she wants to match with a taffeta shirt. If the sales advisor does not know the collection or the availability of items in stock, an app will know everything for him, by indicating the products to offer to the customer or to replace those that are lacking.

And then, a new sales advisor appeared, that livestream shopping one...

Indeed, brands use influencers to highlight certain products, which allows them to have a new store window, in addition to their social networks, knowing that you are visible to everyone on the web. This phenomenon comes to us from Asia, where brands only sell this way. Alibaba was the forerunner of livestream shopping. On this Chinese e-commerce site, the articles are showcased by demonstrators, often real showmen who engage in almost theatrical performances, very attractive to the viewer. You see the item live, you project ourselves into the act of buying, it makes you want to consume. In China, this phenomenon has taken on enormous proportions.

Screenshot of En mode Printemps, episode 8, broadcasted live on November 3, 2021 (© Le Printemps)

And in France ?

This way of distance selling is also a success, since three to four years and especially since the pandemic. Burberry pioneered this trend a few years ago with the concept of connected catwalk, where pieces from the collection were sold, live, during the fashion show. It was revolutionary at the time. Now it's more and more common. For example, this summer, the department store Le Printemps launched its live shopping series, En mode Printemps, in line with a first initiative of this kind in 1999 (with personal shoppers moving around the store with a camera and a GSM phone to sell articles remotely to Internet users, AN). Livestream shopping is now an integral part of the marketing communication strategies of fashion brands and luxury houses.

Webcamers from the Le Printemps store, in 1999 (© Le Printemps)

Is the live video shopping strategy promising for the brands future?

Yes. This is a two-fold winning strategy for leveraging new sales, while increasing awareness of foreign buyers, with whom it is possible to interact. In addition, artificial intelligence can easily intervene in this type of distance selling, since a great deal of customer information is communicated on this occasion. AI can analyze data live and in real-time to provide the brand with insight into customers watching the live shopping. However, this type of shopping also has its drawbacks, in particular because it can contribute to the deterioration of a brand image or of the notoriety of a luxury house, if the event is not well conducted. To be taken with a grain of salt, then.

In the light of our discussion, how do you see the future of shopping, especially in luxury?

With the acceleration of digitization, I see virtual luxury stores with avatars. From your sofa in Paris, you will be able to walk remotely in the Dior virtual store in Shanghai, or any other country, to discover the products, find out their availability and buy them live, in the company of the avatar of a sales consultant. The avatar that presents itself to you will be a real member of the fashion house staff who will truly communicate with you, even if it is virtually. As customer bases will be twinned internationally, this avatar will know you perfectly, will know what items you have already purchased in your country of residence and will suggest others to acquire. This kind of virtual store may still seem as surreal to us as a science fiction or anticipation film, but little by little, in a few years, it will become a reality. The important thing being, in fact, not to lose sight of the fact that, even if the help provided by AI, data, virtuality and technology in general is vital to adapt to the evolutions and challenges of the future, emotion must remain at the heart of the customer experience. Human before the machine, in short.

* Factonics white paper 2021 “Les nouveaux enjeux IA dans le secteur retail post-crise” ("The new AI challenges in the post-crisis retail sector") is available, in french, here.

* Read the first part of Eugénie Benhamou's interview, next week, on Le Boudoir Numérique: "Augmented reality is an artistic canvas for luxury brands".