Some of the best articles from the world of retail and its supporting industries.
Monthly Retail Round-Up - September 2018
There’s no stopping retail. With lots of news to keep track of, Dressipi brings you September’s best stories.
1) Harvey Nichols to Holly Nichols
Knightsbridge department store, Harvey Nichols rebranded to Holly Nichols for its September campaign ‘Let’s hear it for the Girls’. Reported in WWD, “The launch comes shortly after the reopening of the store’s designer women’s wear floor earlier this year”.
Reported in Fashion United, the luxury store “features a new illuminated ‘Holly Nichols’ sign, and has introduced rebranded shopping bags, signage and other collateral across the brand’s London flagship and regional stores” as well as “a website called www.hollynichols.com and all social media channels have undergone a temporary rebrand”. There are also “quotes from famous women, from Coco Chanel to Melinda Gates, spray-painted all over the pavements outside the store” (WWD).
2) New Names and New Identities
Two other retailers that have rebranded but with more permanent changes this September are:
John Lewis
Reported in The Retail Bulletin, John Lewis and Waitrose unveiled new brand names. They have added ‘& Partners’ to their names “to highlight the company’s Partnership business model and culture as it looks to differentiate itself from its main competitors”.
The new names can now be seen across all the facades of their flagship stores and will continue to be added to stores over the next few years. As stated by Fashion United, “all logos have been changed on both retailer’s websites, as well as carrier bags, uniforms, trolleys, marketing activity, internal shop signs and selected lorries and vans”.
Debenhams
Another Department store that rebranded this month was Debenhams. Reported in Fashion United, as part of their new modernisation scheme ‘Debenhams Redesigned’, they have unveiled a “modern, friendlier brand identity as part of continued transformation”. This is their first rebrand in 20 years and spans across its social and digital platforms as well as their stores. The rebrand includes a new logo, store modernisation, a revamped website and a new flagship store in Watford.
In an overall strategy to get customers back into their stores, Sergio Bucher, CEO, Debenhams said in a statement (reported in Fashion United) “The Debenhams Redesigned strategy sets out to reinvent the shopping experience for customers. Whilst we have made real improvements to our stores and continue to improve our product offering we also want to signify overtly to customers that Debenhams is changing and give them more reasons to come in store – our new brand identity is a way of signalling the change.”
3) Harvey Nichols launches Shoppable Video content
As well as their rebranding, Harvey Nichols is in the news again this September for introducing interactive shoppable video technology in stores.
Through a collaboration with Smartzer, Harvey Nichols customers will be able to “shop films shown on full-length touchscreens by tapping on products for more information. The products can then be added to a basket for immediate checkout or connected to a customer’s phone through a QR code”.
In a statement, reported in Drapers, Peter Howroyd, Head of CRM and Digital Marketing, Harvey Nichols, said “We are always looking to bring our customers closer to our product in a unique and innovative way. Smartzer’s technology has enabled us to do just that and bring the digital experience to our customers, not only online but in our stores as well.”
Read the full story from Drapers here.
4) The Social Media Apps that Let You Shop
Instagram unveiled a new shopping feature on their app in March allowing customers to shop straight from a tagged post. They’ve also recently introduced some updates, expanding the Shopping function into Stories and introducing Shopping to the Explore tab.
Snapchat also announced this September that it has partnered with Amazon, slowly rolling out their shopping feature to rival Instagram’s. Reported in Reuters, Snapchat is “testing a new way to search for products on Amazon through its Snapchat app’s camera, allowing users to shop directly using the messaging app”.
Snapchat is continuously adding more features to get more people to use their app and just like Shazam on Snapchat, the only thing users have to do is press and hold the camera screen to shop. Reported in TechCrunch, “Users can use Snapchat’s camera to scan a physical object or barcode, which brings up a card showing that item and similar ones along with their title, price, thumbnail image, average review score and Prime availability. When they tap on one, they will be sent to Amazon’s app or site to buy it”.
We hope you enjoyed the round-up. Please feel free to get in touch with any stories you feel would be of interest.
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