In its second launch of a holiday season store, off-price apparel fashion retailer Bluefly Inc.’s Bluefly.com is exploring more multi-channel strategies while leveraging cross-channel promotions to drive customers from the web to the store and back, president and CEO Melissa Payner tells Internet Retailer.
As its Bluefly.store moniker suggests, the store supports Bluefly’s efforts to closely tie it to Bluefly.com. To publicize the store’s Nov. 18 opening, Bluefly sent e-mail messages to 60,000 customers, offering a 20% discount on store merchandise on opening day. The e-mail coupon was offered as an additional discount to Bluefly’s usual prices, which range from 40% to 80% off original prices for designer labels such as Prada, Hayden and Helen Wang.
About 500 people showed up on opening day, and each one who made an in-store purchase received a 15% coupon good for a subsequent purchase on Bluefly.com. Bluefly will probably continue its cross-channel coupon strategy, Payner says. “It’s getting them going back and forth between the store and the web site, and they understand better the relationship between the two and our overall quality,” she says, adding that she’s considering putting kiosks in the store to let customers shop on Bluefly.com for products not in the store.
The 3,500-square-foot store, located in New York City’s trendy Soho area of Manhattan, will be open through the end of February. Offering both new and liquidation merchandise, it’s going beyond the strategy of last year’s store, which served as a liquidation outlet, Payner says. “The store has new merchandise every day, and we’re constantly testing to see what makes sense as part of our strategy,” she says. “We’ll see how well merchandise does in the stores to see if it would be part of a strategy for liquidation or a combination of new and liquidation merchandise.”
The store appears to be a good tool for introducing new designer fashions, like new cashmere labels, that customers may want to see and feel in a physical location, she adds.
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