Built on Shopify Plus and developed in partnership with Astound Commerce, the new Elie Saab site aims to re-create the in-store customer journey with a content-rich, immersive digital experience. The brand already has five brick-and-mortar boutiques and is also sold at more than 160 international retailers, including Harrods, Net-A-Porter and Saks Fifth Avenue.
Astound and Elie Saab designed the new website as “an authentic manifesto for the brand” while also ensuring transactional capabilities that will allow customers to easily shop its full range of offerings, from ready-to-wear and accessories to home living experiences. A number of technology integrations provide equivalents to a high-touch in-store experience, including:
- Stockist.co to allow customers to view and search inventory across all stockists, including Elie Saab flagship boutiques;
- Calendly to give customers instant access to appointment booking; and
- ERP app Navision and tax compliance vendor Avalara to ensure a seamless checkout and shipping experience for international customers.
“We want to give [our customers] that same Elie Saab experience that they would be used to receiving in-store, digitally, and that meant optimizing every touch point of the online buying journey,” said Elie Saab Jr., CEO of Elie Saab in a statement. “Now our customers can enjoy immersive, content-rich online shopping journeys, no matter what channel they choose to shop from.”
Prior to COVID-19, many luxury brands had been resistant to the idea of ecommerce, believing it would undercut the high-end experience they offered in stores. That changed as the pandemic accelerated ecommerce demand for luxury goods. McKinsey estimates that online luxury sales will more than triple to $91 billion by 2025, a boost that is being driven by digitally savvy millennial and Gen Z shoppers.