LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is ready to launch a multibrand luxury eCommerce site that falls under the branding umbrella of Le Bon Marché, the company’s upmarket department store.
According to The New York Times, 24 Sèvres, a boutique shopping website and mobile app named after the Paris street that Le Bon Marché is on, goes live in under a month. It is a project that Ian Rogers, the company’s chief digital officer, has been working on since his arrival 18 months ago.
“We believe we are on the cusp of revealing something very exciting,” he said.
And while some of the fashion industry’s power players have mixed reactions to another contender coming into a crowded sector (Yoox Net-a-Porter, FarFetch and MatchesFashion.com are already competing for the world’s wealthiest consumers), there’s no doubt LVMH’s entry can be a game changer.
The conglomerate owns 70 luxury brands, including Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Fendi and Givenchy. And while LVMH had previously faltered in the multibrand luxury space after its website eLuxury closed in 2009, Rogers believes the timing is right. He explained that LVMH had considered every branding possibility for 24 Sèvres, which will initially stock only woman’s wear, but settled on maintaining a connection to Le Bon Marché because of its 160-year history as a pioneer in catalog sales.
24 Sèvres has some similarities with its more established rivals, including fast delivery times to an array of international locations; chatbots or stylists-on-demand; glossy packaging, complete with Eiffel Tower cutout pop-ups and love notes from Paris; and an efficient checkout process. 24 Sèvres is also the name of the current loyalty program run by the department store, with legions of existing members.
Of the 150 brands initially on 24 Sèvres, only around 20 to 30 will be LVMH-owned (that will include Louis Vuitton and Dior, neither of which are available via any other multibrand online boutique). For non-LVMH labels, inventory with either be acquired wholesale or controlled by those brands that operate their own shop-in-shop style retail channel, the same model operated by the store.
“Don’t think of this as the LVMH eCommerce project; think of this as us taking Le Bon Marché international via the internet,” Rogers said.
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