Ulric Jerome, CEO of luxury fashion retailer MatchesFashion, joined Glossy+ members for a Slack Chat on Oct. 30. The e-commerce veteran, who first joined MatchesFashion as COO in 2013, discussed how the company is approaching physical retail, how it’s competing in the crowded online luxury space and how it’s tackling the Chinese market.
The full conversation is available exclusively to Glossy+ members, but lightly edited excerpts appear below. Click here to join Glossy+.
What’s the key to competing in the crowded online luxury space?
At the end of the day, the luxury market is massive, and still, only 10 percent [of sales] are made online — it should be 25 percent to 30 percent. So we are at the very beginning, and when you think of it, there are very few competitors. In fairness, we don’t look too much at what the competition does — we are driven by our point of view and trying to anticipate the need of our customers. Customers want newness, personality. … We are in business of excitement! That’s what people want today. We need to be authentic, as well.
How does [physical retail] fit into MatchesFashion’s overall strategy?
For us, it’s about creating a lifestyle — an opportunity to create a community. It’s a lifestyle of curiosity and newness, with a very highly curated edit of product and content. Everything [in store] is available on our app and site — you can live the experience physically, or anywhere you are in the world.
Have you made inroads into the Chinese market? What’s your strategy there?
China is, of course, a big market, and we’ve been shipping to China for many years. Asia, overall, is a very significant market for us already. We opened an office in Hong Kong two years ago and have already tripled the size of that office. So we are working hard there.
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The U.S. is a big focus. Asia is also one. Private/personal shopping is a great opportunity, as well. We are working on so many things.
