No e-commerce for Chanel

Fashion

Chanel, one of the world's most covetable fashion and accessory brands, will not be launching an e-commerce site to sell its collections online.The company stated it prefers to drive shoppers into boutiques and maintain brand equity. The

brand’s president of fashion, Bruno Pavlovsky, maintains that its clothes are viewed better in stores, where customers are tended to by staff.

In

an interview with Business of Fashion Pavlovsky said: “Our clothes are quite sophisticated and one of our strengths is alterations. To be able to wear Chanel clothes, you need to try them on. You need to be in the fitting room. You need to have a tailor who alters the clothes to fit exactly to your body. I think it’s part of Chanel. It’s more than just our service. It’s part of our differentiation to have ready-to-wear that is perfect for our customers. What we want today – and the way we use digital – is to have more and more people come to the boutique to see the product, to touch the product, but also to try the product.”

The company, on the other hand, has “huge” plans to launch an “e-service project” within the next five years. The label currently sells fragrance and beauty products digitally, but ready-to-wear and handbags are still only available in boutiques.

“It’s a strategic choice,” Pavlosky stated. “It’s a choice to say: ‘Guys, you can see whatever you want on the internet, but we want you to come to the boutique, because we feel that in the boutique we can give you the right understanding of the brand.’ So, yes we could sell handbags on the internet. But my feeling is that it’s not qualitative enough and it’s not the kind of service that we want to give to our customers – at the moment.”

Chanel