This story is part of Glossy’s Return to Analog series, focused on the fashion and beauty brands embracing all things analog and retro, including those eschewing social media marketing or AI and those embracing traditional crafts or print media.
The best way to sell a product is often one-on-one. Doing so has been a key strategy for high-end luxury brands for centuries. And in recent years, with e-commerce booming and emerging technologies including AI chatbots putting more distance between brands and customers, those connections are more important than ever.
Traditional clienteling, born from high-end department stores, involves sales associates maintaining close relationships with customers, including by keeping track of their information and purchasing habits, and actively consulting with them on new products and future purchases.
The potential that one-on-one clienteling can have on a brand is clear when looking at Zegna’s fourth quarter of 2023 earnings released last week. Rodrigo Bazan, CEO of Thom Browne, said clienteling was key to the brand’s success during the quarter driving millions of dollars worth of sales. Overall the brand reported quarterly revenue of over $410 million, an increase of 26% since it joined Zegna six years ago.
“We have made a conscious effort since last year to make any brand moment, like the 20th anniversary [dinner, held in Los Angeles last week], a client moment and a client event,” Barzan said on the call. “We are seeing a multimillion-dollar performance with clients on the back of these events. We are extremely focused right now on presenting the show collections not only in New York to our clients, but also in one-to-one appointments with significant clients.”
But, according to Carlin Rollenhagen, who formerly led personal shopping for Ssense before becoming head of clienteling for retail consultancy Loughlin Joseph last year, many luxury brands are missing out on the clienteling opportunity.
“Right now, a lot of people are hiring store associates who are younger because retail pay structures make it harder to keep senior associates,” Rollenhagen said. “And the focus is just on the selling. Brands and retailers tend to focus on the numbers and the KPIs, and so they miss out on a lot of the qualitative benefits of clienteling that take time and may be less trackable.”
Loughlin Joseph consults on clienteling strategies for several New York- and London-based retailers. It also works with New York-based luxury fashion brand Melke, which has price points that exceed $1,000.
But Loughlin Joseph’s founder Ruari Mahon said even non-luxury brands can benefit from investing in clienteling.
“It’s not all high luxury,” Mahon said. “Some of the best customer service we’ve had, when Carlin and I have scoped out retail stores, was at [DTC menswear brand] Buck Mason. A shirt there is $45, and yet the staff is fantastic, knowledgeable and warm.”
New technologies have brought clienteling into the modern era. Rollenhagen said he uses a platform called Seer which lets sales associates create textable lookbooks and also keep track of client information and interactions. Similar tech platforms have emerged in recent years, like Hero, which was acquired by Klarna for over $100 million in 2021. That’s despite the fact that some high-end clients prefer an old-fashioned pen-and-paper approach to keeping track of their purchases and interests, he said.
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a security standard adopted by all major credit card and financial institutions, expressly forbids keeping certain customer information details — such as their credit card numbers — on paper. Instead, such information must be stored digitally and behind digital security protections.
“There are a lot of hurdles that you have to jump through to maintain the old style of clienteling,” Rollenhagen said. “So for older clients, who may be used to things being done differently, we have to educate them about the way things are done now.”
For both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar brands, Rollenhagen said one-to-one customer interaction, either in-person or over the phone, is still the norm for a good clienteling service.
Jeffrey Cohen, president of Citizen Watch America for the watch brand Citizen, said clienteling shouldn’t be exclusive to those who make a purchase. For its part, Citizen often kicks off clienteling with customers entering its stores for a watch repair, for example. In fact, doing so has become a central part of the company’s retail strategy. Since watches can last for decades, first-time Citizen buyers often go to a store to service an old watch they inherited, rather than to buy a new watch.
“Watches are very generational,” Cohen said. “People like the watches that their grandfather had. Once they’re in, we have concierge service. We sit down with them and introduce them to the brand.” Last year, Citizen saw record profits, growing 15% year-over-year.
Mahon said initiating clienteling service among first-time customers seeking repairs was also a strategy when he worked at Swedish denim brand Nudie Jeans until 2017.
“You have to look at clienteling almost as more of a communications or marketing strategy than a retail strategy,” Mahon said. “When we consult with brands, we tell them not to relegate this to only a retail scenario. In a world of social media, when there’s so much content everywhere, a one-on-one conversation with a customer is such a valuable thing to invest in.”
