Creating a first of its kind digital flagship, blending heritage with modern luxury retail and ecommerce
Real-time communication between digital touchpoints and in-store wayfinding
Optimized entry points for local visitors and global e-commerce shoppers
Digitally scaling 160 years of Parisian luxury for the U.S. market
Background
In the midst of its ambitious global reinvention, iconic French department store Printemps started its first American endeavor when it converted a 55,000-square foot landmark at One Wall Street to become a shopping experience all of its own. Printemps, with its 160 year legacy of opulence in Paris, wanted to combine that classic Parisian heritage with a digitally savvy, contemporary customer experience that would be adapted to the United States market.
Our Strategy Team worked with Printemps leadership to develop a phased roadmap, starting with the physical store website experience to build brand trust prior to fully bringing the digital commerce layer into play.
The Challenge
Making the transition from an informative hub for a newly reintroduced city landmark to a commerce service involved navigating the line between speedy market entry and high fidelity scalability.
L+R was faced with the challenge of making the website speak to two distinct user journeys: store visiting information needed to reach the local dwellers, while also providing a strong shopping platform to the e-commerce target audience. We also needed to merge those two different paths without losing the brand whimsical identity or alienating the on-the-ground demographic who would like to go to the physical location.
The Solution
We designed an entry point for the site that intuitively guides users towards either the new e-commerce page, or the 'Visit the Store' site that highlights the physical store details for visitors.
Alongside Our Engineering Team, the Design Team collaborated to ensure the brand's signature interplay of playfulness and luxury was retained while designing unique landing pages for curated collections. Its technical foundation honors user intent and is aligned with humanist principles, and thus ensures that backend complexity never harms the fluidity of the frontend experience for the target user.
The Impact
The platform launched on schedule and successfully achieved full consensus between New York stakeholders and Paris headquarters, enabling real-time navigation across 10+ unique store zones. By honouring the uniquely specific needs of the in-store visitor and the online shopper, we created an omnichannel ecosystem that manages a curated catalog of approximately 2,500 active SKUs. Successful adoption at launch meant that the digital infrastructure sustained an initial wave of approximately 50,000 active users, closing the gap between 160 years of physical heritage and digital innovation.
