Retail - It's Here
WORLDTEMPUS - 11 May 2010
For a while, it seemed as if the Swiss watch industry was going to be one of the luxury trade's few e-commerce holdouts. Executives pointedly discouraged the idea of selling their pricey timepieces on line, vowing to protect the customer experience, not to mention the brick-and-mortar retailer who provided it.
A series of recent developments, however, suggest that luxury leaders in Switzerland have re-evaluated their Internet strategies, and are now investing millions into building e-commerce platforms supplemented by a frenzy of online marketing.
Swiss brands online
TAG Heuer was among the first and the most innovative in the digital realm. Last year, the brand introduced an e-training program that allows its sales staff to train from home; an e-after sales program that gives consumers electronic updates at every stage of the repair process; and, crucially, an e-tailing program that directs online shoppers to the websites of its brick-and-mortar partners.
"Some of our retailers had projects to go on the web, but the execution didn't necessarily display the brand except to display the product," CEO Jean-Christophe Babin said. "The risk was that TAG was featured on the Internet with no special environment. Rather than letting them invent their own environment, we proposed a service we call e-tailing."
On December 1, Bell & Ross launched its answer to the digital question, an e-boutique that sells the brand's entire watch collection, totaling approximately 300 models, to online customers in Europe. The French-Swiss watchmaking firm described the new venture as "an unprecedented partnership with its European retail network," thanks to a system that allows retailers to get credit for some online purchases.
The latest to announce e-commerce capability is Longines, which went live—and direct to consumers—with its new e-shop in early April.
Haute e-tailing
A sign that the haute end of the Swiss watch business is also coming around to e-commerce is the recent acquisition of the luxury e-tailer Net-a-Porter by the Richemont luxury group, owners of Cartier, Panerai and IWC, along with many other high-end watch brands.
"Internet shopping is just another way luxury consumers look to interact with their favorite brands—especially affluent men who do not want to go to the store," said Pam Danziger, founder of Unity Marketing, which recently completed a study about how affluent consumers use the Internet. "There's something to fear if luxury brands don't make themselves accessible on the Internet because the Internet attracts the high value consumers that luxury brands want to connect with."
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