PARIS – After a slow summer due to the Olympic Games, sales at Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette were up 15 percent during the month of October, said Arthur Lemoine, offer and buying director of the group. That strength is continuing into November, he added.
“We have seen a really good dynamic, and we are really confident for the end of the year,” he said. “We expect to grow our sales for this Christmas season.”
That means the retailer is on track for its stated growth target of 4 percent for 2024, Lemoine said.
The customer mix for the month of October was a mix of locals and tourists, with a surge in foot traffic starting in September following the Olympic Games.
During a press presentation in April, the company expected the impact of the Olympics to dent their summer business by about 10 percent. Lemoine said that while year-over-year sales were indeed down, it was not as dire. They were above expectations in July and “almost flat” in August, he said.
September saw “high growth,” which he credits to a rosy post-Olympics residual glow as tourists were charmed on TV. That month, the store celebrated its 130th anniversary with a variety of activations under the famed dome, including special collections and private events, which additionally boosted sales in the post-Olympic period.
The department store is also benefiting from its new layout, unveiled earlier this year, which has fueled growth, Lemoine said.
“The refurbishment has helped us a lot in our books,” he said. “Sales in the departments [that have been refurbished] are much higher in terms of growth than what has not been refurbished,” he said.
Among them, Rolex is now in a space five times as large at 2,690 square feet, on par with a boutique and a necessary improvement particularly for local customers, he said. “In a travel retail experience standing up for such a watch can be suitable, but for local customers it’s usually a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so you need to have an exceptional experience.”
The store has improved the watch and jewelry section, with Tiffany & Co. another brand that has expanded. The new space can more comfortably host engagement ring shoppers, most of which are local customers, he added.
The larger brand spaces were all about improving the customer experience to be on par with any brand’s freestanding flagship “without the constraints inside a department store,” he said. The new layout also clarified the customer flow.
Brands such as Saint Laurent now have a wider array of accessories and handbags, for example, which play an increasingly important role. Leather goods represent between 20 and 25 percent of overall business activity for the store.
The store, which has been at the center of protests by animal rights activists, said it does not plan to rethink its pro-fur policy.
“We are focusing on the labels,” he said. The store will continue to sell fur “certified by one of the standards recognized by the Furmark program.”
Expanding spaces, realigning brands and making beauty a centerpiece of the ground floor have all helped boost sales. Having luxury brands surround the makeup and fragrance section provides a more organic, “cross-category” experience.
The store is going big on beauty, with a multipronged approach to the category by adding new offers to its skin care and wellness space, focusing on fine fragrances including L’Artisan Parfumeur and Frederic Malle, as well as bringing in newer, popular brands such as Charlotte Tilbury.
“We want to have the same level of offer and the same level of luxury experience in the beauty [section],” he said, noting that it is part of a strategy to differentiate itself from beauty specialist stores and popular drug stores.
To bring in the Charlotte Tilbury brand, the store worked for a year to find the right positioning for it and create its space.
“We think that to keep the beauty at the heart of the ground floor is also a way to keep the energy of a department store,” said Lemoine. “It’s really a leverage of differentiation [among] the department stores of Paris.”
The store’s customer mix has shifted since 2019. Pre-pandemic, roughly 40 percent of Galeries Lafayette customers were from China, with that number down to about 20 percent currently. As Chinese tourists have started to return, they are less part of big tour groups and more individual customers.
Lemoine said that foot traffic numbers have returned to 2019 levels, but the retailer has “rebalanced” its customer base with more tourists from the U.S. and the Middle East. Tourists from the U.S. now account for 11 percent of sales.
That has resulted in an increased size range. “When we host American, Middle Eastern, Asian and local customers, having a wide range of sizes is key to success for us in terms of inclusivity,” he said.
Local customers now make up 40 percent of the mix and are boosting sales of smaller designer brands.
Hipper, younger-skewing luxury brands such as Jacquemus and Courrèges have opened spaces that are on par with their own-brand boutiques at 1,300 square feet. The group has focused on bringing in 20 newer brands, including Toteme, Victoria Beckham and Zimmermann, among others.
These brands are especially important in reaching local customers who are interested in discovering new designers, Lemoine said. While the smaller brands play on par with the luxury price point, they have an added air of newness and creativity that drives sales for the local customer. That client is also younger.
The appeal drives foot traffic. “The floor enables us to recruit the most new customers,” he said of the young designer level.
Younger, creative brands such as Officine General and The Frankie Shop are also dotted among the designer labels.
“We really did a deep dive into the data to understand which brands are cross-selling together,” he said. “They are speaking to the same customers as the designer brands.”
Galeries Lafayette also used data to discover that costume jewelry was cross-selling with the contemporary brands, thus the company elevated the experience with a more open section.
Bringing in digital-native brands such as Rouje and Balzac Paris has been a key driver of growth on the contemporary level, as those brand fans and their social media communities will seek out the physical space. “It has helped us to recruit new customers, and helped Balzac to recruit new customers. We had a complete convergence of strategy,” he said.
The company is also looking to grow its two in-house private labels, the multicategory brand Galeries Lafayette and the contemporary label Jodhpur. To revamp, the company clarified the brands and combined categories such as babies and kids to streamline the offerings, such as within the Galeries Lafayette label, and is moving with a collaboration strategy, such as a just-launched cashmere twinset with Lou Doillon. Jodhpur recently completed a 360 revamp for its workwear.
Moving footwear from the basement to the fourth floor — the largest shoe department in Europe — has also been a boost. “It’s a huge traffic builder,” said Lemoine. “It has helped us to have good traffic on the three floors underneath.”
Its resale section Restore, opened in 2021, has been repositioned to sit across from the contemporary brands. “It’s cross-selling a lot [because] it’s exactly the same customers who love to mix contemporary and secondhand.”
Much of those sales are accessories and handbags, including Hermès, a brand which is not carried in the store, Lemoine said. The store works with specialist sourcing partners to secure authentic products.
As the retailer strengthens its omnichannel offering, online sales are now roughly on par with one of its large regional department stores, such as its outpost in Nice, Lemoine said.
The company is also continuing to adapt its store on Avenue des Champs-Élysées, which opened in 2019.
“We were a little bit too niche and not inclusive enough, so we have tried to be a little bit sharper in our selection,” he said. It is now positioned as more of a launchpad for newer brands. For example, the South Korean brand System was successfully trialed there before moving to the Boulevard Haussmann flagship location.
The department store will next revamp its three-story, dedicated menswear building, beginning in 2025. “We are clearly leading in the men’s business among the department stores thanks to our [stand-alone] store, which has been there since the 1960s. We have really high ambitions [in that category]. It’s growing, and we are developing our leadership about it.”
