#LVMH #ONLINE #PLATFORM #LEBONMARCHE

Industry: luxury retail

Designer: Ian Rogers

Location: Online

Related to: LVMH online platform Le Marche

Reviewer: Yujia HUO- Parsons School of Design

Website: https://www.ft.com/content/464b3de2-03cb-11e7-ace0-1ce02ef0def9

LVMH, one of the world’s largest luxury goods company, plans to launch a website in May that will be branded as its department store Le Bon Marché. It will offer labels from the group’s own stable as well as distributing non-LVMH brands. This website is the indicator that this luxury group is taking digital commerce more seriously and it will become the biggest competitor of the famous platforms like Net-A-Porter, Matchesfashion.com and Farfetch.

Leading the initiative will be former Apple executive Ian Rogers, hired by Arnault in 2015 to spearhead digital strategy at the world’s biggest luxury goods group.

During these years, luxury brands have been slow comers to the online space. Instead, they prefer to create more high-class and emotional experience for customers in stores. However, internet has become an unavoidable trend for luxury industry. According to Boston Consulting Group, e-commerce will expand to 12 per cent by 2020 from September 2016. And by 2025, online luxury goods sales are expected to increase five-fold, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report this month. More and more luxury brands start to open their online shop during these years. As for LVMH, its online sales of 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion) last year equated to 5.3 percent of group revenue.