Smart shopping at Chanel’s first OMO store @ NY

At Chanel’s newly-opened “Atelier Beauté CHANEL” — a new-age cosmetic shop where one can ‘try before you buy’ — customers keep their belongings at a locker and need only their smartphones in hand for a whole new shopping experience. BeautyTech.jp’s reporter checked it out.

This cutting edge store in NY is the embodiment of Chanel’s aim to “improve the point of contact between customers and Chanel products”.

The store is located at SOHO, an area lined with high-class boutiques. In recent years the area has also become popular with brick-and-mortar stores of high profile D2C brands. An inconspicuous sign marks the location of “Atelier Beauté CHANEL”. A ring of the intercom opens the door that leads to a stairway to the second floor.

Register at the counter, leave your coat and belongings behind, and with a smartphone in hand, log on to a dedicated website.

After this simple process, one can roam the store freely. The rules are simple: “Do it yourself’ and “try, and try some more”.

Upon entering the store, one’s attention is brought to the cleansing and skincare zone. Sinks and towels are available for one to use cleansing items and remove makeup before trying the skincare items. There’s also a foundation corner nearby, where one can apply base makeup soon after.

After that, head to the eye makeup corner for mascara and eyeliner etc., and further in lies a wide array of lip care products.

While there are plenty of highlights in the store, what deserves particular attention is the detail to hygiene. At Chanel’s lip corner, products are kept in one-time use plastic cases.

“Like” or “Dislike” via your smartphone

The unique feature of “Atelier Beauté CHANEL” is the fact that one can do everything with just smartphone in hand. While trying out the products one can check “Like” and “Dislike” on the smartphones.

Should one choose to buy a product, just add the product into your mobile shopping cart and pick it up before you exit. Of course, you can have it delivered to your home, or if you can’t decide on the spot, you can just try out as many things as possible and review the goods online later. This hands-free shopping experience makes it possible to focus on trying out products and changes the shopping process.

Open your mind to new scents

Amongst the many trials, perhaps the most impressive one was for Chanel’s perfumes, where one can choose a favorite fragrance from “ATELIER PARFUM CHANEL”. This only permits a few participants at a time. In a dimmed setting, bottles line the wall along with unlabeled flower-shaped objects only numbered 1–47.

Labels are removed so that one judges the fragrance without any preconception of it. “Aromatic”, “woody” etc. categories are used in classifying the 47 types of fragrances, for participants to pick three of their favorite scents.

What appears to be the flower-shaped objects’ stalks are sticks that one can pull to sniff the tip to see if they like the fragrance. One can then access Atelier Beauté’s site and navigate to the fragrances section, and enter the number of their preferred scent. The ingredients and inspiration behind the fragrance are explained to help guide the customer make a choice as to their preferred scent.

To visit this page, one has to enter a passcode provided by the staff, and doing this while in a dimly lit room with just a few people sharing the experience, feels strangely like a communion of a shared secret.

Once all the sniffing is complete, you convey your three favorite scents to the staff. These bottles are picked up and more detailed information on these products is provided, while slips of paper dipped in the fragrances are handed over.

Finally, you are asked for your final choice of fragrance. The staff will infuse a coin-sized pottery plate in the fragrance, put a string through it and fasten it around your wrist as a bracelet.

The scent will last around 5 to 7 days, so within that period just by wearing the wristband one can experience how the smell will mix with your body scent before making a decision on whether to purchase or not.

The three scents chosen will be automatically registered on your smartphone, so that you can purchase them online. This is a good example of the stance of the store, “trial” and “experience”, even over a period of time before deciding to buy.

Getting an “even deeper understanding” from customers

Using smartphones to change the customer experience.

Unlike most stores where one has to face a beauty advisor when sampling products and may find it difficult to convey their dislike for the product clearly, with smartphones they can be frank about their feelings.

On the side of the brand, such data can be obtained from the smartphone and purchase histories as well as skin type data, and the information can be used in future product development and sales promotion.

Also, the profile created here is not unique to the store alone, but other Chanel stores can also use the data for reference. Atelier Beauté CHANEL serves as an entry point for the real world into the digital one. Customers to the store don’t mind registering to have this exclusive service, and following that their shopping experience both online and offline can be done seamlessly.

For Chanel to reach this extent of OMO (Online Merges Offline) early into the game, other luxury brands are certainly feeling the pressure.

Text: Ching Li Tor
Original text (Japanese): Shidu Kumon