Dubai : Ten years ago, David Lauren took to the stage with Bill Gates in Las Vegas to talk about how the fashion industry was going online.
Today, as the vice-president of marketing for his father's company — Ralph Lauren — David is still finding ways to take it there, from interactive advertising campaigns to online fashion shows. Lauren sat down with Gulf News as the company opened its store in the Dubai Mall to talk about the company's marketing goals.
"Ralph Lauren was a pioneer with marketing in magazines," he said. "We hope to do — and are doing — the same with the internet."
When Lauren launched the site 10 years ago, there were still a lot of questions about the viability of e-commerce.
"When we started it, most customers were concerned as to how you could sell an expensive product," he said. "Could you sell a bag for $30,000 (Dh110,100)? Could you sell shoes? Could you sell tuxedos for men? The answer is yes. The reason we were able to sell it is because we've learned how to sell it."
What the company has had to learn, he says, is how to create an online retail experience that is compelling but still feels fresh, and how to create a personal sensibility in what can sometimes feel like a very cold environment.
"When people come online we don't want people feeling like they're looking at a different brand," he said. "It has to, in many ways, be better than a retail experience to really work."
To do that requires some very non-technical work. Lauren said he spent the week before the Dubai opening travelling around the world to the company's brick-and-mortar stores. You can only learn about these places by going there and asking questions, he says.
"[You have to find] out what kind of products they like. Why they shop the way they shop, where they shop, and walk through the stores and see what customers are responding too."
Research
Here in Dubai, that also meant looking at the difference between UAE nationals and the expat community.
Lauren said the company looked at everything from where people spend their money, to what magazines people read, to who uses the internet.
"We're trying to learn as much as we can about the markets that we sell products in," he said.
One thing he says he's found is online sales work best in combination with physical stores.
"We find the customers who shop in our stores also shop online," he said. "So it's not either/or. A customer who shops online is likely to shop in our stores as well. A multichannel customer is the best customer you can have."
Ralph Lauren is getting ready to launch its online store in Europe, but while there are no current plans to launch in the Middle East, Lauren seems optimistic that e-commerce will find its way into the region.
"It's coming. The world is going online," he says. "I was in Korea last week, and mobile technology in Korea is just part of people's life. In America, it just started less than a year ago where people can watch videos on their cell phones ... And now fashion companies are showing their fashion shows to customers on their mobile phones. A year ago, it was innovative to even show it on a computer. The world is moving very quickly, and as it becomes commonplace, it's going to become commonplace around the world."
The challenge for the Middle East, he says, will be to get ahead of the other parts of the world and find technology and ways of connecting to the internet that are unique to the local community.
Challenge
Lauren said finding a bridge between the company's retail stores and mobile technology is their number one challenge. To that end, the company has even rolled out an iPhone application, which Lauren said has been very successful in terms of driving the brand name.
"It's going to fall to brands to showcase their products. We created an online fashion show for our brand that was exclusive for the internet, and we created a compelling advertising message and advertising plans that drove tons of traffic to our site."
Lauren said there are other challenges online as well. He said the shopping experience online is currently limited by computer and internet speeds, as well as the format of websites themselves. But the payoff has been worth it, he said.
