Digital fatigue: how traditional stores are going through an unexpected golden age

Early January.

We are in the Galería Canalejas, the super-luxury shopping center in the heart of Madrid.

It is one of the most unaffordable shopping destinations in the capital, but inside there is a bustle similar to that of the surrounding streets.

Entire families walk around looking at the windows of Dior, Valentino or Cartier, there is a line to enter Louis Vuitton and tourists wait to take photos in front of the light decoration that adorns the

Hermès

boutique .

Down the street, the lions of the Cortes are bored with practically no one coming to take a selfie with them.

After witnessing this scene on Madrid's new golden mile, it is clear that in terms of high fashion, clicking and receiving your package at your doorstep is no longer so exciting.

Or that's what the numbers say.

According to sector analysts, the physical store is experiencing a golden age, while

luxury multi-brand

online stores are suffering a post-pandemic decline.

According to data from the Italian association of Altagamma brands, during 2023 sales in its own

boutique

grew by approximately 13%, while

online

transactions fell by 5%.

As they say in the industry, we have gone 'from click to

brick'

.

The obsession with optimized user experience has contributed to digital fatigue reaching luxury as well.

Capturing the buyer's attention has become complicated, especially if they are expected to spend significant amounts of money.

In our extreme digital existence, much of the business strategy has been based on offering a

frictionless

online journey, based on technological innovation but without much personality.

The images are proposed by artificial intelligence, you try on clothes thanks to virtual reality and customer service is managed with

chatbots.

The aesthetic proposal never offends or presents challenges: it is a mediocre

premium

effect , with monochrome tones and Sans Serif typography.

The idea is that the purchase goes smoothly, but the reality is that people are not that bothered by friction.

Deep down we want contact, interaction with humans, thinking about what we buy, looking at ourselves in one of those tricked-out mirrors in which we reflect ourselves so well.

And by the way, make a few videos for TikTok recording the entire process.

We want to put into practice that tacit social agreement in which we know perfectly well that the clerks are on commission, but we still feel good when we are cajoled.

We want them to praise our taste and wrap our purchases with the same ties as those who spend five times more.

Who wouldn't like a lie told with grace?

Image from the Madrid Canalejas Gallery.DANIEL SCHÄFER

The idea of ​​going shopping now responds to a consumerist fantasy that makes us become someone else.

As if it were a fairy tale, our pumpkin becomes a float.

Because even if we buy the cheapest item in the entire store, we imagine ourselves like Georgina Rodríguez killing it at Cavalli, or like Julia Roberts in

Pretty Woman,

snapping at an uptight saleswoman who has screwed up completely.

On the other hand, two of the banners of

online luxury,

which seemed to revolutionize the fashion industry, have been sold to companies far from exclusive.

Farfetch, a pioneer of digital fashion, avoided bankruptcy after its sale to the Korean Amazon Coupang.

For its part, the Frasers group, known in the United Kingdom for its sports stores, has bought all the shares of the multi-brand store Matches.

What has happened to cause these innovative platforms to find themselves in difficulties?

The consultant and researcher specialized in fashion Sonia Vega Pérez lists several factors.

“The first is that today's informed fashion consumer demands special shopping experiences as added value.

What was once reflected in an interest in integrated content (purchasable content), is now manifested in an appetite for in-person experiences, especially linked to the restabilization of social life and entertainment, as well as to the value of the local and the independent brand.”

For Vega Pérez, brands today aim to master the entire process.

“Especially in the luxury sector, firms are reluctant to lose control of their positioning at the hands of digital

marketplaces

and their aggressive promotion and discount strategies.

Instead, they invest in developing and cementing their own strategies, which allow them to make direct connections with their audience.

This presents new difficulties for multi-brand platforms, the so-called

pure players,

who find it increasingly difficult to secure a product catalog up to par."

'Socialize' the purchase (and vice versa)

The introduction of other new consumer habits, which make luxury items seen as an investment, has led to other variables in the purchasing equation.

If at some point that item is going to be resold, physical purchase offers the added bonus of experience.

That piece is no longer owned, but the experience remains.

The most established fashion houses are in turn great promoters of the return to analogue luxury.

With the increasing cost of performance

marketing

and digital campaigns, there is a resurgence of actions that contribute to rebuilding the history and perception of the brand.

The most successful within

brand marketing

is what the trend consultancy The Future Laboratory defined as hyperphysical establishments: spaces with a visual hook and designed so that customers can spend a good time there socializing and taking photos.

They obviously seek the purchase, but also the dissemination of the proposal with content generated by users.

An example is

instagrammables

Jacquemus

pop-up

spaces , which recreate washing machines and swimming pools.

Or the fictitious British village that Anya Hindmarch has created on one of the streets of the London neighborhood of Knightsbridge, where you can have tea, design a custom billboard, buy cookies or take a sequin bag in the shape of a chocolate bar.

Basically it is the dichotomy of investing in physical spaces to ensure presence on social networks.

It says a lot about where things are going that Balenciaga, always aware of the pulse of the present, created an ode to the physical store with its show in Los Angeles in December.

During the presentation of the Pre-Fall 2024 collection she revealed her collaboration with the very expensive healthy food supermarket Erewhon, whose bag Kim Kardashian wore in the front row.

If her creative director Demna Gvasalia wanted to include this establishment in her Los Angeles project, it is because Erewhon in the Venice district is not just going to go bankrupt with its juices and

ice matcha latte.

There you also go to see people, hear what they say and observe a certain type of Californian culture.

The visit leaves our credit card shaking, but you have something to talk about for a while.

It is precisely in those conversations where the firms want to be.

Brands are no longer just targeting classic locations.

Louis Vuitton has opened a store in Taormina and Chanel will open one in Edinburgh.

The physical store has been posited as the key for brands to claim their own channels.

In the last two years, boutique

openings

have not stopped growing.

Already during 2022, luxury brands opened 77% more of their own establishments in Europe, according to the specialized real estate agency Savills.

This increase coincides with forecasts that point to this year as the year with the most tourism since the pandemic.

According to

The State of Fashion

report by consulting firm McKinsey,

shopping

is among one of travelers' favorite activities.

And brands have decided to look for them wherever they go.

This means that they are not only targeting classic locations or capitals like Paris, which will also host the Olympic Games this year.

Louis Vuitton opened a cafe and

boutique

in Taormina, Sicily, a location that has gained popularity after

The White Lotus series.

And this year Chanel plans to open a store in Edinburgh, having made a collection with Scottish manufacturers two years ago and having organized its

Métiers d'arts

show in Manchester last December.

Image of the 'Métiers d'art' show that Chanel held in Manchester last December.Launchmetrics

“We attract a very heterogeneous audience,” explains César Glaría, Marketing Director of Galería Canalejas in Madrid.

“It is, increasingly, an attraction for the local public who finds new brands that do not exist in other parts of the city, and which allows them to park easily at kilometer zero.

And of course we welcome a large part of the international public, a new

premium

tourist from the city of Madrid attracted by the great gastronomic and cultural offer, as well as by a renewed luxury hospitality offer, especially that in the center of the capital.

The countries of origin we receive are mainly Latin America, the United States, Asia and the Middle East.”

The question for digital fashion platforms is how to connect with an audience that no longer considers them so attractive.

“The market-place

model

must now find new conversations and spaces for connection,” argues Sonia Vega Pérez.

“The answer, at this point, may be the combination of physical and digital, currently yet to be explored,” she says.

These hybrid spaces not only offer attractive interactive

gadgets

such as smart mirrors, with which you can adjust the light, ask for assistance or add a video call.

In addition, they operate as a kind of opulent warehouses to manage e-commerce activity, with collection points for

online orders.

These dynamics make

boutiques

perfect data collection centers, storing individual customer preferences and determining the most popular products at each location.

Who would have thought that despite brands' obsession with entering the metaverse, the brick will be the one that takes fashion into the future.