- Federico Marchetti`s company, Yoox, has turned the luxury

086
The
September
issue
Fe d e r i c o M a r c h e t t i ’s
c o m p a n y, Y o o x , h a s
turned the luxurygoods industry digital
BY
Greg Williams
_
Right: Yoox CEO
Federico Marchetti
photographed for
WIRED at its Milan
HQ, June 2014
ROBOT ARMS: ANDY KNIGHT
PHOTOGRAPHY:
Olaf Blecker
088
_
Right: a stacker
crane zips along a
12.5m-tall aisle in
a Yoox warehouse
near Bologna
On May 17, 2000, accountants from KPMG were called
to the Carnaby Street offices of the online fashion retailer
boo.com. Their task was to begin liquidating the assets of
a company that had burned through £80m in cash from
investors including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Bernard
Arnault, the then chairman of luxury group LVMH. Boo.com
became the most conspicuous British failure of web 1.0.
Two months earlier, a 30-year-old Italian entrepreneur,
Federico Marchetti, had launched a company called Yoox.com
– the name was derived from the Y and X chromosomes and
the 00 a nod towards the binary of computer code. Like the
founders of Boo.com, Marchetti’s vision was of a web-based
company that sold clothes and accessories but, unlike the
London-based startup, Marchetti thought of his platform as
being less about lifestyle and more about, well, selling stuff.
The first line of his business plan was that Yoox would be
“the global internet retailing partner for leading fashion
and design brands”. Marchetti’s straightforward statement
of intent has, to a large degree, come about. Now, as well
as Yoox.com, which sells end-of-season and remainder
clothing for brands such as Dolce & Gabanna, Yves Saint
Laurent, Armani, Stella McCartney, Prada, Lanvin and Diesel,
the Yoox Group owns thecorner.com, which showcases
designers through mini-stores, a footwear retail platform,
shoescribe.com, and “powers” – meaning all web services
and order fulfilment – the online operations of 37 of the
world’s best-known luxury brands as an “invisible partner”.
Marchetti is referred to as the Jeff Bezos of fashion, in
that he has mastered the logistical aspect of the business:
the management of online stores, the handling and shipping
of products, digital production, payments and customer
care. These parts of the fashion industry don’t receive the
attention of catwalk shows or play into the popular notion
of the agonised genius in the atelier, but nevertheless
are crucial to the way that luxury brands are perceived.
To achieve this Marchetti has done something that, in the
year 2000, appeared unlikely: he has succeeded in persuading
executives in the luxury goods industry, many of whom were
initially skeptical toward online retail, that e-commerce can
complement their traditional activities by providing them
with a global sales platform and new ways of marketing their
products through responsive, elegant websites.
Marchetti describes how, as a teenager, he would look at
things and wonder how they might be improved. “That’s
what I applied to fashion and the internet 15 years ago,”
he says. “I looked at these two worlds that were so distant
from each other, but I saw that they could help each other
one day with the help of a link. I was, I am, the link.”
LO C AT I O N
PHOTOGRAPHY:
Fred
MacGregor
Imran Amed, founder,
Business of Fashion
_
Imran Amed, a
former management
consultant,
launched the
blog Business of
Fashion (BoF) from
his sofa in Notting
Hill in January
2007, despite not
knowing a huge
amount about the
fashion business.
“It was just this
black box,” he
says. “It didn’t
seem to follow
the traditional
rules that other
industries
would follow.”
That intrigue
was just what
Amed craved. A
year earlier he had
resigned from a
high-paying job at
McKinsey that had
sent him around
the world advising
CEOs. Fashion
was different. “It
seemed that there
was something
irrational about
it – it’s creative.
Without creativity,
the fashion
industry doesn’t
exist. But it’s also
operational.”
Channelling an
outsider’s curiosity,
Amed explored
and explained the
basics of what was
typically portrayed
as a glamorous
but impenetrable
industry. That
dispassionate yet
inclusive approach
began to attract
a sizeable global
following, which
now stands at
more than 1.5
million people,
and increased the
Canadian’s stature
as an objective
observer. Seed
funding of £1.3
million came from
Index Ventures,
luxury brand
LVMH and Samos
Investments in
February 2013.
Because of its
focus on commerce
rather than the
fluffier side of
the industry, BoF,
which is based in
London’s Soho, is
the place where
entrepreneurs
come to break
stories: in spring
2014, Net-A-Porter
founder Natalie
Massenet gave
Amed an exclusive
first look at the
digital retailer’s
new “shoppable
magazine”, Porter.
Having reported
on the impact of
technology on the
fashion industry,
Amed is now
looking to monetise
the BoF brand
by connecting
“talented people
with opportunities”
through a new
careers platform.
“After all,” he
says, “without
technology, what
BoF has developed
into wouldn’t have
been possible.”
Matt Cowan
PHOTOGRAPHY:
Neil
Gavin
_
Left: Imran Amed.
GQ India named
him Best-Dressed
Global Indian, 2012
ince I was a child I wanted to be an
entrepreneur,” Marchetti explains in June
2014, sitting at a white, circular table in the
vast space that serves as his office at the Yoox
Group’s headquarters in the Navigli area of
Milan. The space feels more like a luxurious
warehouse than the domain of an executive of a listed
companywithamarketcapitalisationof 1.16billion(£930m).
Marchetti, who is neat and trim, grew up in Ravenna, a
small city on the Adriatic about 70km east of Bologna. The
son of a warehouse man at Fiat and a telephonist, Marchetti
didn’t grow up in the kind of family that sends its children to
do an MBA in the US. But after an undergraduate degree in
economics and commerce from Luigi Bocconi University in
Milan, he was awarded a scholarship to Columbia University.
And, although Marchetti had no interest in climbing the
corporate ladder, he took a job as an analyst at Goldman
Sachs, initially in London and then in Milan.
“I wanted to work for banks for three years with the
simple goal: to learn as much as possible,” he says. “I was not
passionate about corporate finance; I got there, I worked 90
hours per week for three years and I learned a lot, then I left.”
Marchetti put together a business plan in October and
November of 1999 and quit his job in December, having been
at the Boston-based consulting firm Bain Capital for only
three months. (He describes the experience of working there
as “horrible”.) Marchetti spent January pitching his startup
idea: potential investors were receptive, but nobody wanted
to be the first to write a cheque. Then, in mid-February 2000,
Marchetti met Elserino Piol, the former CEO and Chairman
of Olivetti. “He understood technology, understood people,
understood how to make a company,” Marchetti says. Piol
invested three billion lira (£1.2m) in exchange for 33 per cent
of the business, and still sits on the Yoox board. The deal was
done in March 2000. A month later tech stocks across the
world began to tank. Marchetti says that he was unfazed.
“I’m pretty orthodox in following a plan,” he says.
“So I have a vision, and there is a plan from here to the vision…
So basically I don’t care what happens.”
Nevertheless, he points out that there was a degree of
good fortune in his timing. “If everything had happened
two months later, we wouldn’t be here, that’s for sure,” he
says, “because the doors of the venture capitalists, they
closed for three years – after April, no money for anybody.”
Marchetti had a vision, he had capital, but there was still
a major obstacle to overcome: persuading luxury goods
and fashion companies that they could trust him with
their brands. Trusting a complete outsider, a man from the
provinces with limited connections in Milan or the fashion
industry, who was attempting to convince them to believe
in a medium still in its infancy, was a big step. Through
friends and friends of friends he met with companies such
as Armani and influential individuals like the entrepreneur
Renzo Rosso, the founder of Diesel. Many were skeptical, but
a few bought into Marchetti’s vision and took the plunge.
“I have to say, chapeau [hats off] to all these designers,
because they believed in me and I was not giving them
millions at that time – now, yes. I was just really selling a
dream and they dreamed with me.”
“I think that it’s fair to say that fashion and luxury goods
companies opposed the internet for many years,” says Luca
Solca, managing director of Exane BNP Paribas Luxury
Goods. “There were concerns about the discount part of it,
there were concerns about brand trivialisation.”
Fundamentally though, the brands needed expertise
and execution. The Yoox.com business model is straightforward – the company purchases out-of-season inventory
THANKS T0: RAPHA CYCLE CLUB, LONDON
090
UK fashion
disruptor #1
UK fashion
disruptor #2
Olapic, visual
commerce app
_
Founded by three
Spanish students
who met at New
York’s Columbia
Business School,
Olapic is a leader in
the nascent field of
visual commerce:
identifying images
featuring products
across social
media and helping
brands “tap into
content generated
by consumers and
make it shoppable,”
says cofounder
Jose de Cabo.
The proponents
of visual commerce
believe Instagram
images can have a
similar galvanising
effect to online
reviews. “You
know the photo
was taken by a
real person, not
a professional
photographer”
de Cabo says.
“Consumers trust
that more.” MC
avide Di Dario stands in the doorway
to a Yoox warehouse on an industrial estate just outside Bologna. The
company’s demand planning director
is tall and dressed all in black – jeans,
a T-shirt and jacket. Di Dario, 43, who
is lean from swimming five days per week, trained as a
philologist at the University of Pisa, but turned from a life
in academia to one in customer service after ending up
working in a call centre after college.
Along with a team of 15 managers who work at a nearby
hushed, white-washed office with vaulted ceilings known
within the company as “the temple”, Di Dario oversees 250
web developers, designers and programmers (the company
employs 800 people in total). By creating a seamless, rich
customer experience through content and marrying this
with customer data, Yoox is able to create what it hopes
is something akin to a luxury experience in the real world.
“We have a huge amount of data they don’t have in the
physical world,” Di Dario says. His team is able to establish
dozens of data points, including how long a customer has
been shopping, what they looked at, what time of day they
looked, and the time it took to make a purchase.
“You cannot be further than us from the customer,”
Di Dario says, “but we are very close to them because we
know exactly what they are doing.” Products are built from
customer response – for instance, the team established
there was a demand for packaging without the Yoox logo.
“Feedback isn’t just about solving the customer problem,”
Di Dario says. “It’s an internal tool to optimise.”
A seamless, handsome web offering is one thing: delivering products to customers when those buyers could
be anywhere from Beijing to Bradford is a very different
challenge, especially when an order is received, on average,
THANKS TO: WORKSHOP COFFEE, LONDON
and sells it on to customers via the web. The mono-brand
model – meaning the designer websites that the Yoox Group
“powers” – is different: Yoox makes a little less than a third
of the sale price on every item, meaning that the brands
make more than wholesale and a little less than at retail,
but without the associated costs.
“The idea of a digital store was fascinating to me because
of the enormous potential – the internet allowed us to reach
a global clientele and especially people in countries where
we don’t have a mono-brand shop,” says Carolina Castiglioni,
special projects director of Marni which, in 2006, became
the first luxury goods company to launch a mono-brand
store with the Yoox Group. “[It was] a way also to present
our collection in our way and not through distributors
or multi-brand shops. You can create image, constantly
update and present it in your way.”
Up until that point, luxury brands had experimented
by putting some accessories online, but few were willing
to risk their mainline collections on the web. Marni took
the plunge, creating a site that didn’t make a distinction
between physical and virtual retail. “The idea was to have
the concept the same as the shops,” Castiglioni says.
“Ready-to-wear was the main category. At that time it
was a bit strange. But, in the end, we were right.”
Yoox innovated by introducing a data driven approach to
fashion, relying on an algorithm that’s said to run to four
hundred pages of code. Marchetti describes its author,
Alberto Grignolo, as “the most important man in the organisation”. Among other things, the code helps buyers to
ensure that Yoox purchases exactly the right amount of
inventory – a key attribute in a low margin business – to
satisfy customer demand and, critically, how customers
will respond to trends in what remains a business built
on intangibles such as trends and emotion.
every 11 seconds. The moment a customer completes a transaction, the order is conveyed to the Yoox Group warehouse.
The company currently has three such facilities outside
Bologna, with four more to be built. There are also hubs in
New Jersey, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
“The business model is based on centralised inventory,
so the majority of the products that we present to our users
worldwide are here,” Di Dario says. “This is coupled with local
hubs – they are shipment hubs as well as [being] equipped
withlocaldigitalproduction.Ononehanditgivesusthepossibility to sell to our nearly 15 million customers a centralised
inventory, increasing the margin, on the other side we have
the possibility to localise the inventory – for instance, for
certain brands who want to be closer to certain key markets.”
WhenYooxfirstbuiltthewarehousesin2007theyoperated
in a traditional way, using barcodes and manual picking. But
the company grew at such a rate that the physical capacity
of the warehouse couldn’t keep up with the digital demand.
“In 2010, we had to decide whether to move to a larger
place or to operate in a different manner,” Di Dario says.
“So we automated the warehouses based on RFID (Radio
Frequency Identification).” Up to that point, RFID tags had
been widely used in the grocery industry, but not in fashion.
An inbound logistics warehouse performs product receipt
and product SKU (a unique product identifier code) to which
an RFID tag is attached. “It’s the core of the automation,”
Di Dario says. “RFID gives us full control of the inventory
level – we know where every single item is throughout the
supply chain and the automation is based on it.”
What Di Dario means is that, at every stage, the operation
is dependent on being able to locate each of the five million
products it holds in its warehouses instantly and match
them with a customer order. This takes place in warehouse
spaces totalling 86km2, the equivalent of 318 tennis courts.
When deliveries are made to the warehouse, one item is
taken from each batch and the other items are put into stock.
The product that’s been separated from the others is then
used for digital production, attaching all the data needed
for the item to be presented and sold online – the product
description, photography, post-production and quality
control. The warehouses have 60 photographers working in
55 studios on mono-brands and automated photography for
Yoox.com that completes 200 photos an hour, by means of a
series of mannequins that glide slowly around a mechanised
route. This way 15,000 items are photographed every day.
The products are then distributed randomly in what
Yoox employees describe as “aliens”: black crates that are
stacked in the warehouses ready for robotic cranes to fetch
them when an order comes in. The accuracy of the contents
of the box is checked throughout the warehousing process
– the crates pass along conveyor belts both at ground level
and suspended overhead, and, at various stages, must pass
through white arches. Inside each are antennae that verify
the contents of the crate via the RFID tags.
“We are always 100 per cent sure that what’s contained
in the box is what the customer orders,” Di Dario says. The
facility normally operates from 8am to 6pm but during busy
periods, such as Christmas, it can be open 24 hours per day.
The crates are stored in enormous shelving units until
an order picker needs one of the items they contain. This
part of the warehouse looks like a dystopian city as storyboarded by James Cameron: there are 20 aisles, each of
which is 12.5 metres tall, extending from the floor to ceiling.
An automated ordering system dictates the movement
of two stacker cranes that are balletic and jerky by turns
as they glide between the long aisles at six metres per
second, collecting crates at a mesmerising pace.
093
_
Left: batches of
items at the Yoox
Group Logistics
Centre, Interporto
UK fashion
disruptor #3
Julia Fowler, cofounder, EDITD
_
PHOTOGRAPHY:
Jasper
Clarke
Even in fashion,
data analysts are
the new rock stars.
Which makes Geoff
Watts and Julia
Fowler (above), the
married cofounders
of EDITD, the
London fashion
tech scene’s new
It couple. Originally
from Australia,
Watts and Fowler
moved to the UK
to set up EDITD,
based in London’s
Hatton Garden,
in 2009. Fowler,
a womenswear
designer, knew how
tough it was to get
detailed insights
about the market.
“We didn’t have
data to figure out
what products we
should be backing,”
Fowler says. “You
might know that
last season we had
a cardigan that sold
really well. But you
didn’t know if there
was an opportunity
you may have
missed out on.”
The EDITD
analytics tool is
a dashboard of
what’s hot and
what’s not across
the entire industry.
So, the jeans buyer
at one retailer can
easily compare the
relative success
of jeggings versus
boyfriend and
skinny cuts at their
own company and
at other stores.
EDITD now
works with most UK
high-street fashion
brands, as well as
major international
retailers such as
Gap and Target.
This analytical
approach to
fashion has its
detractors, who
believe fashion
decisions should
be inspired by
instinct and
intuition. Watts
argues that
this concern is
misplaced. “People
have seen tooling
make some
industries become
commoditised and
boring, right?” he
says. “But fashion
is the number one
way people express
themselves. So
unless society and
people’s sense
of self becomes
diluted, fashion
will never lose that
innovation.” MC
The cranes deliver their cargo to conveyor belts, which
run for 4.9km throughout the warehouse. “The same as the
Autodromo Dino Ferrari at Imola,” Di Dario says. There are
two different kinds of orders – one is for the final customer,
the other for local hubs. When crates arrive at one of the
24 picking stations, an image of the required item appears
onscreen in front the picker. The worker finds the item in
the crate – which include items in assorted colours to make
them easier to pick out – and confirms that it’s correct by
swiping the RFID tag. Next to each picker are what appear
to be stacks of lockers. After an item has been swiped, a blue
light associated with a particular locker lights up and the
item is placed inside. On the other side of the lockers a packer
will remove the completed order, box it up with tissue paper,
stickers or ribbons and print a unique tag on the box that
identifies its contents. “We increased the productivity here
by 500 per cent,” Di Dario says of the automated process as
packages pass by with labels reading Russia, France, the UK
and Greece. In 2013, the company shipped 2.8 million orders.
It’s late afternoon in Bologna as Di Dario nods towards a pile of
boxes.“ThosewillbeinNewYorktomorrowmorning,”hesays.
At a table at the far end of the warehouse four women
are packing goods for a mono-brand – in this case high-end
leather-goods firm Bottega Veneta. Each luxury company
has strict rules on the packaging and presentation of its
goods, meaning that only five items are processed per hour.
“These are the least productive tables because we
are required to perform these activities,” Di Dario says.
“It’s the same as in a boutique; the only difference is you are
not offered coffee or prosecco.”
heformerCEOofBurberry,AngelaAhrendts
– who assumed the role of vice president
of retail at Apple in May 2014 – portrayed
the luxury customer as having two defining
characteristics: they used mobile devices to
shop and they travelled widely. Most luxury
stores now offer a facility where customers can try a coat on
in, say, Hong Kong and then pick it up in-store when you’re on
businessinZurich,orhaveitdeliveredtoyourhomeinLisbon.
Executives at Yoox are keen to stress that the company’s
global expansion is underpinned by a bespoke approach
to customer service in each territory: transactions are
completed in local currencies, sizing is organised in local
denominations, partnerships are signed with native payment
companies (such as Sofort in Germany and Alipay in China)
and mother-tongue customer agents answer calls at its seven
customer service centres. Accordingly, courier companies
are hired in different territories; in China, for instance,
such is the concern about replica goods that, when FedEx
couriers deliver a package, they wait for 15 minutes to give
the customer time to inspect and try on the garment.
Mobile now accounts for 40 per cent of Yoox’s traffic.
Marchetti expects that to be 50 per cent by the end of the year,
but he is less bullish about so-called “omnichannel” retail
– meaning a seamless continuity of experience throughout
all customer touchpoints in the physical and digital world.
“Any innovation depends on how long it’s going to take –
so mobile takes six or seven years to really become 50 per
cent of the traffic. As an information tool, cross-channel is
already relevant. In terms of retail I think it’s going to take
a little bit longer than everybody expects.”
Equally, Marchetti doesn’t see catwalk shows becoming
an outdated way of designers marketing and selling their
products. “Because the fashion show is a good way to get
people together in one place and make business, which is
something with the internet you cannot do.”
095
UK fashion
disruptor #4
Nick Knight, photographer
_
SELF PORTRAIT:
Nick Knight
for WIRED
_
Left: the conveyor
belts in the Yoox
warehouse run for
4.9 kilometres
Long before the
advent of YouTube
and Twitter, Nick
Knight (above)
was offering a
window into his
experiences
as a fashion
photographer
through film
and real-time
interaction. “When
a designer creates
a garment, it’s
to be seen in
movement,” he
says. “So any still
image of fashion,
however beautiful,
is to some degree a
compromise.”
He began filming
his shoots in 1986,
but there was no
medium for sharing
his films. “The
internet came into
my life in 1997, 1998,
and I thought it was
a platform where
I could put fashion
film,” Knight says.
By 2009, Knight
was pioneering
the livestreaming
of catwalk shows
for Alexander
McQueen’s last
collection, Plato’s
Atlantis. “The
machines almost
melted as six
million people
tried to get on
to the site,” he
says. “But that
showed it could
be done.” Knight
now livestreams
all of his photo
shoots. “I don’t
think what I do is
photography any
more. I think [it’s] a
different medium
that doesn’t
adhere to any of
the parameters
that define
photography,”
he says.
Although
Belgravia-based
SHOWstudio has
been around since
web 1.0, Knight has
plans for where
he’d like to see it
go in the future.
“The next step is
to take it physically
to New York and
open a SHOWstudio
there and open one
in LA and Beijing
and Moscow and
spread them like a
series of cells,” he
says. “You would
very quickly end
up with a global
broadcasting
channel that’s live
24 hours a day.” MC
archettidescribeshimselfaslikeilgrillo
parlante, the talking cricket in Carlo
Collodi’s book from 1883, Le Avventure
di Pinocchio: he communicates between
two worlds – technology and fashion.
“Iftheydon’twanttofollow,theydon’t
wanttofollow,butallthetimeIsaywhatIthink,”hesaysofthe
executivesattheluxurycompanies,thevastmajorityofwhom
would have nothing to do with Amazon. Although Marchetti
doesn’t mention Amazon directly he says that “everything
starts from the source – the source is still what we’re working
on and what differentiates you from all the others.” The
implication being that, although brands are willing to
innovate in retail, they aren’t likely to end up on Amazon.
This position of trust within the luxury industry has
made him a wealthy man – he has an 11 per cent fully diluted
stake in Yoox. (Public offerings are a relatively rare event
in Italy – Yoox’s IPO on December 3, 2009, was the first in
the country in 17 months.) Marchetti recently renovated
an apartment in Milan’s Piazza Castello, opposite the city’s
15th century castle, after making a personal appeal, via a
handwritten letter, to the elderly owners who planned just
to rent the space: they ended up selling it to Marchetti. He
collects art – he has work by Lucian Freud, John Currin and
Andy Warhol, among others – and a four-year-old daughter,
Margherita, with his girlfriend, fashion journalist Kerry
Olsen. Yoox now sells work by artists such as Damian Hirst,
Mark Quinn and Peter Blake and designs from companies
such as Cappellini, Alessi and Kartell (Yoox has recently
taken on Kartell as one of its mono-brand clients.) And the
Yoox Group is now moving into creative services, offering
strategic and creative direction for its partner brands – with
13 million visitors per month, there is an opportunity to
develop relevant content. Yet, although Marchetti’s house-
warming was attended by big names in Milanese fashion, he
still retains a slight distance from the industry – choosing,
for instance, to travel economy class when flying in Europe.
“I think that there are a lot of advantages of being an
outsider, because I can see everything from very fresh eyes,
and I still have fresh eyes, despite the fact that I’m kind of
an e-commerce dinosaur – I mean, 15 years in e-commerce
is quite a lot,” he says. “Once you are an insider, sometimes
you lose your spontaneity, and so I love to be a little bit one
step back. But on the other side, two steps forward in terms
of innovation. So I find my balance in the middle.”
Luca Solca, the industry analyst who was CEO of luxury
group IT Holding (which held licenses to Karl Lagerfeld, Jean
PaulGaultierandFerré)from2002to2005andpartneredwith
Yoox,believesthattherewillcontinuetobesignificantdemand
within the fashion industry for end-of-season clearance
services, and predicts that this is where Yoox’s growth will
occur. But he sees two major challenges for Marchetti.
“Large brands in the future will want to manage the
online distribution in the same way that they’d manage
their stores – directly.” Solca sees other challenges coming
from mass-market e-commerce sites in the US and Asia.
“Amazon seems to be quite interested in luxury goods in
the US,” he says. “And (Chinese e-commerce sites) Tmall and
Taobao [are] offering similar services in China. So I think
they’re going to be up against the big boys.”
Back in Milan, one of the many screens at the Yoox
office displaying real-time customer data shows that,
somewhere in Italy, a customer has just placed an order for
145.08. Marchetti takes a sip of his coffee. “It’s a lot of
responsibility,” he says. “But I continue to sleep very well.”
097
A few key technologies hitting the catwalk
3D
DESIGN
3D
PRINTING
_
_
The journey from sketch
to sample is often slow,
costly and liable to
miscommunication and
error. But 3D garment
software offers a new level
of accuracy, relying on
digital simulation of fabrics
that can be modified and
communicated between
large groups of people
in real time. Israel’s
Browzwear is a pioneer and
is used by over 400 brands,
including Nike and Adidas.
In South Korea, CLO3D
incorporates 3D output
into runway presentations,
e-commerce and virtual
dressing rooms where you
can “try on” garments.
Additive manufacturing is
not quite consumer-ready.
There have been plenty
of PR stunts, for instance
3D-printed lingerie at
the 2013 Victoria’s Secret
catwalk show, but the
elasticity and texture of
fabrics is hard to replicate.
However, the technology is
being applied successfully
in accessories and
jewellery. Designers are
now able to print major
precious metals such as
bronze, silver, gold and
platinum. Companies
such as Shapeways,
a New York-based startup,
have been assisting top
brands with CAD design,
material selection, printing
and marketing.
UK fashion
disruptor #5
INTERACTIVE
DISPLAYS
VIRTUAL
REALITY
Nathalie Gaveau, founder, Shopcade
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E-commerce has
challenged brands and
retailers to rethink the
in-store experience.
New York-based Perch
is encouraging shoppers
to pick up and playfully
engage with products in
a new way. The hardware,
which is installed in shop
ceilings – for instance
the Kate Spade store in
London – has an optical
sensor that detects when
products are handled
and triggers real-time
digital content such as
product details, photos,
tips and user reviews.
By registering every
interaction, Perch collects
valuable consumer data.
Earlier this year, with the
help of Inition, an agency
that works on consumer
experiences with emerging
technologies, Topshop
enabled customers to
experience a fashion show
at its Oxford Circus store
– while the actual event
was happening at the Tate
Modern a few miles away.
Customers were fitted with
Oculus Rift headsets and
watched live streamed
HD footage, 360-degree
photography, tweets and
animations. If they looked
straight ahead they were
able to see the live catwalk
unfold on one virtual screen
as well as the celebrities
they are sitting “next to”,
thanks to an 180-degree
wide angle on the stream.
If they looked behind them
at a second virtual screen
they saw a view into the
backstage area. Liz Bacelar
A Google search of
Nathalie Gaveau’s
two startups
speaks volumes
about the evolution
of e-commerce.
PriceMinister.
com, which the
entrepreneur
(above) launched
in Paris in 2000 as
a French version of
eBay, before selling
it to Rakuten in
2010 for 200
million (£180m),
now resembles
a car-boot sale
transposed to the
web, complete with
banner ads.
Shopcade, the
social-shopping
app she founded
in November 2011,
on the other hand,
is bright, clean
and modern. The
platform favours
native advertising
and content that
comes via its
community.
“Shopcade is the
first ‘shoppable’
fashion magazine
made by users and
brands,” Gaveau
says. Short for
“shopping arcade”,
Notting Hillbased Shopcade
was launched on
Facebook before
becoming its own
site and iOS app.
“I started
Shopcade because
I felt there was
a gap,” Gaveau
says, explaining
that social media
and e-commerce
seemed strangely
disconnected. As a
result, the tone of
the site doesn’t just
have personality,
it has multiple
personalities.
There’s @sophiehannahrichardson,
a stylist and
blogger with a
penchant for bold
prints, and Francis
Lola, a purplehaired blogger who
goes by the handle
@flamcis, and is a
purveyor of boho
chic. Readers who
follow them can
buy items they’ve
pinned. Shopcade
also works with
brands to create
content. “People
don’t like ads,”
Gaveau says. “But
a good piece of
content, everybody
loves it, right?” MC
PHOTOGRAPHY:
Andrew
Woffinden
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Below: one of 55
digital production
studios, where
products are
photographed
Greg Williams is the executive editor of WIRED.
He wrote about the future of retail in 03.14