By: Sunil
The term 2 of our batch started with an educational trip to the Delhi’s ultra luxury mall DLF Emporio. The mall is famous for Luxury fashion brands from all around the world as well as from Indian designers.The visit was supposed to start at 10.30 a.m. but, I along with one of my classmates Rahul reached half an hour early. We both were visiting the mall for the first time and the first moment of awe was the moment when we reached at the entrance of the mall. The courtyard with a huge fountain was looking very beautiful but the main eye catchers were the magnificent window displays of the two famous luxury brands Louis Vuitton and Dior. Both the brands have tried to capture the customers’ maximum attention through their ‘out of the world’ window displays and one cannot ignore the beauty of these store’s windows. All we both were wishing, was to visit these stores quickly and see how they look from the inside. We were supposed to visit five brands namely LV,Dior, Missoni, Versace, Roberto Cavali. This time we were visiting all fashion brands because the key learning was “Fashion is the fulcrum of the whole Luxury industry and a successful luxury brand manager must have the knowledge of that industry because all the different luxury sectors are directly or indirectly, affected by Fashion industry”.By 10:45 a.m. everyone from our batch and Mr. Akshay, our Head of Operations and Mr. Abhay Gupta, C.E.O. of our college came to supervise our visit and guide us.
Dior was the first store we visited. The store’s white theme was the first thing that I noticed. The whole store’s color theme was white mixed with yellow and white lights, giving the store a sophisticated look and communicating Dior’s brand value of Sophistication with chicness. At the Store, Dior’s Country head Mr. Anurag Tyagi were there to assist the students and educate us about the Brand and its brand values. I must say he is a brilliant storyteller and he explained, with great detail each and every product of the brand which was present in the store . One of the most important thing that I learned from him is in luxury business we need to be a storyteller and should know each and everything about the products of the brand as well as the how to present and tell the story is also of utter importance. One must tell story in such a way that the customer is not buying an item, but buying a dream. He told us about all the products of Dior like the Famous Lady dior, Dior’s Ja’Dior and Ja’Dore collections of this season and a unique cruise collection of Dior that held this year in L.A. The overall Atmospherics of the store were very classy .They had a separate lounge for their Special Clients. The store Personnel were all wearing black formals and were very well groomed and polite. Lastly we saw Dior homme collection which is the men’s collection. I really liked their new sneakers and now aspire to buy those someday in the future. The thing I really liked about the Dior store’s Visual merchandising was that they had focused on their key pieces by putting focus lights on them or using LED glowing Stands.
The 2nd store was Louis Vuitton. It is located just opposite to the Dior Store and gives a cut throat competition to Dior in each and every factor whether it’s the store’s visual appeal or the the size of the window displays.The visual merchandising elements are amazing. Their window was the main attention seeking element. It’s an art by Mr. Jeff Koons.The windows of LV had the famous Jeff Koons Art ‘the balloon dog’ on it. The store personnel were very active and filled with great enthusiasm. One of the store’s Associate gave us the tour of the whole store. Louis Vuitton has been famous for their travel trunks for ages, So he showed us the Trunk of Majaraja of Jammu , showing LV’s rich heritage and the sign of popularity of the brand in the Raj era. At that time customers had already started coming to the store. Most of the customers were HNI’s Wives with their children. Louis Vouitton’s Popularity in India could be noticed, as by 12.30 P.M. store had a lot of customers.Then the associate also showed us the bags which were Lv’s collaboration with Jeff Koons and were special editions. These all had Famous artworks by Jeff Loons such as Gauguin and other special editions such as artworks of Ancient Rome, Luncheon on the Grass and Monet by Famous artish Turner on their Bags showing the love of luxury brands to the different art movments of the Renaissance Period of Europe.
The 3rd Store we visited was Missoni, a complete knit wear brand from Verese, Itlay. The store had a very subtle element in Visual merchandising theme. The Personnel were Well Dressed but the whole store was empty with no customers, indicating the fact that Indians Have less Interest in buying expensive Knit wear. This thing was also confirmed by the store manager, that the customers usually buy accessories of that brand more like scarves, ties etc. And the Knitwear sales is overall less because their knits are usually very heavy and in Delhi it’s not that much cold as compared to Europe. I found that brand very interesting and really liked their 26 colored fabric collection. In that collection, one piece is dipped in a lot of colors during the manufacturing and the end result is the 25 or 26 colors of the Cardigan.
Moving on, the next brands were Roberto Cavali and Versace. We quickly toured both the brands. Both the brands are very bold ,Chic and colorful brands. Roberto Cavali’s men section; I must say was having the best and the most unique pieces. Whereas, Versace’s Tuxedos were eye catchingin the men’s section . One Key thing that I learned from the brand Roberto Cavali is that “due to their bold Women’s wear items, it is very hard for the sales personnel to sell the pieces to Indian women and the merchandiser has to put special attention about what pieces to buy for the Indian stores”.One thing was common in all the stores we visited that in all the stores there were screens showing the fashion shows of their respective brand. One can buy the same looks that those models in the show were wearing from the respective stores.
So, the overall learning experience was immense. And I learnt two big things that I am definitely going to incorporate in my Life : Communicate in a polite way by being a story teller, clearly knowing each and everything about the brand and the values, and delivering those values to the customers. The other thing is understanding the customers’ behavior, their demographics, psychographics and behavioral, cultural factors and make the changes in our brand accordingly so that our brand is liked by all and accepted by all.
