Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…But there's no buy button. It's also for a different audience. Interestingly, 70% of buyers online for all the stuff that you can buy online were new to Hermes. That's a great strategy for them for ecommerce that you say, look, the special things are the special things. But for people who we want to come experience the brand for the first time, great, we've got a website for you. I think you can sort of tell that internally they're torn, since that's not the full Hermes experience. You don't get the experiential part of being in the store. But they also do a lot of volume through it, it's a way to reach a new audience, and it's an expectation at this point. This is a really uniquely Hermes thing and is related to their airport strategy too. I experienced this too. When I went to Palo Alto, I just walked into the store. I was pretty intimidated as a first time buyer and you don't have an SA or sales associate relationship. It can feel very intimidating, especially knowing what I know about the company and the brand, the weight of history, walking into this store. It's not like walking into an Ikea. This is very intentional, the ecommerce strategy. The airport strategy is, hey, nobody feels intimidated in an airport. Obviously, you don't have to have an appointment to walk into the airport Hermes store. It's a way to get first time buyers into the fold, establish the relationship with them, and get them more comfortable in this buying experience, which is wholly unique to Hermes.…

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