There’s always something lovely to covet in the emails delivered by the Selfridges marketing team. The clean and simple layout is a continual tease with the beautiful international apparel, cosmetics and homewares that far exceed my budget. This week was no exception – Urban Survival.
The call to action - “Summer in the city can be simply frightful so we’ve called on our friends at Mulberry and Barbour to create the most darling packs full of urban essentials, exclusively for us.” Boom. Here’s my chance as a consumer to pick up an exclusive collection by some of my favourite brands. Broad pricing – starting from £50 for a Kiehls kit up to £1,500 for the Mulberry Emma Hill urban survival backpack, gives consumers of all budgets the power to purchase.
The point is that this is just another example of what Selfridges do so well – creating an authentic story to package up and sell brands. Ex-CEO Victorio Radice had vision when he announced he wanted to recreate Selfridges as 'the house of brands'. This is their mantra. They collaborate with their brands to come up with exclusive offerings unique to Selfridges for a multitude of exciting promotions – from the Big Bang celebrations for the Queen’s Jubilee, to Project Ocean and their 100th birthday celebrations back in 2009.
At a time when our major department stores are scrambling to remain relevant you’d hope such an initiative to be contagious. But this approach isn’t just applicable to the big players. Any retailer stocking a selection of brands should be thinking about how they can partner together to come up with unique ways to stimulate demand. Leveraging events is one of the easiest opportunities but remember, your offer needs to be original.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
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