Jean Cassegrain, CEO of Longchamp: "I am totally agnostic in terms of sales channel"

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New brand platform launched in 2019 and extended in 2020, tripling of e-commerce turnover, launch of omnichannel services, commitment to a sustainable economy... The house of Longchamp, an iconic French brand of luxury leather goods, rhymes with tradition and modernity. The explanations of its CEO, Jean Cassegrain.

No less than 1,300 points of sale, including 300 owned, plus online points of sale. How has the Covid crisis changed the ratios between "on" and "off line" within your company?

The health crisis has accelerated digital transformation. Overall worldwide, our online sales tripled in 2021 compared to 2019. This is a very strong acceleration. Selling online has allowed us to maintain a link, an open purchasing channel for our customers at times when everything was closed. While since 2020, there have been successive episodes of opening and closing which are not always at the same time depending on the country, e-commerce has allowed us, despite these difficulties, to maintain a level of sales everywhere in the world. However, when the stores reopen, do customers return to the points of sale? We realize that consumers continue to buy a lot online . In Europe, physical stores have reopened but online sales continue to grow at a sustained pace. I believe that the lockdowns have pushed customers to discover and expand their practice of online shopping to new segments.

How do you approach your different markets?

The French are our first clientele. Our brand, born in 1948, remains in this French and Parisian spirit. However, the image of the Parisienne makes many women dream in the world. After the French, our second market is China, the United States, Japan, England... In terms of online sales, the countries are not all at the same level of maturity. The most advanced are probably the Americans, the English and, in Asia, the Chinese and Koreans.

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A word about your results and your ambitions for the year 2022, and in the longer term?

We do not foresee a rapid return to normal and, for 2022, we have a cautious forecast in the current context. The channel of physical points of sale continues to suffer. Longchamp has an image that is strongly associated with travel. And our products are purchased a lot at airports. To date, many of these stores are only beginning to reopen and recovery is taking time. On the other hand, our brand is developing very strongly with local customers.

How fast is your e-commerce business growing? Is this a strategic channel in your opinion?

We invest a lot in e-commerce because we believe that in the years to come, the growth of our online sales will continue to be higher than the growth of our sales in physical stores. However, I am totally agnostic in terms of sales channel. I believe that our role as a brand is to provide access to products in the way that best suits our customers. In 2019, we launched a new version of the site, completely redesigned. And during the year 2020, we did the "roll out" (deployment to new users, editor's note) of the platform. We now sell in e-commerce in many countries, about twenty. And each site is operated in the language of the country, with a local consumer service, an adapted pricing policy...

What types of innovative services are you working on?

In 2020, we focused on the development of omnichannel functions that somewhat blur the boundaries between the online experience and the in-store experience. Thus, in certain countries, in Europe and the USA in particular, we use an application which allows our sales staff to take "chat" requests from customers of the website. We believe that the people best qualified to answer a question about a product are really the sales people, in store. They are our best experts! In addition, they can have the smartphone in one hand and the product in front of them... This requires a bit of organization. Some sellers are very interested and are willing. The difficulty is to orchestrate these exchanges with customers who are physically in the point of sale but, overall, the experience is rather positive.

What other omnichannel services are you developing?

Now, online shoppers have access to stock from all of our stores . At the end of the season, when some stores may face shortages, the customer who is in Perpignan, for example, may receive his product, sent by the Strasbourg store, without him noticing. We are also implementing this year the "store to web", which will allow, conversely, when you are in store, to place an order on the web and have it delivered to your home or store. The scenarios are relatively complex to organize but they allow not to miss sales opportunities. Finally, we have long believed in product customization features. We launched the "My Pliage" service, which has been used to personalize your bag online since 2003. We will soon be celebrating the 20th anniversary of this personalization service. We were precursors on the subject and we even started online sales with it, because at the time, 20 years ago, we wanted to invent a product that would not compete with physical networks. The beauty of the internet in this case is to establish a direct dialogue between the customer at home and the manufacturing workshop...

Longchamp is making strong commitments to the sustainable economy and implementing an ambitious CSR project. How does this translate?

We have indeed given a little more visibility to these commitments, but the subject has been inscribed in our long-standing DNA. We are a manufacturer and we are connected to the materials, and to the "physicality" of the product. Our workshops are located in the west of France and this workshop spirit marks our internal culture . For example, in the workshop, no one likes to waste, it's a state of mind specific to craftsmen. Currently, we repair a lot of products but we have always done so. It became very fashionable, but there was a time when it was difficult to convince people to have their items repaired. However, it has been part of our culture for a long time. Another strong commitment, we made the decision to change the manufacturing method of our folding range. We now use recycled polyamide. This is very significant because these are high-volume products, and it is therefore a real industrial project. The whole difficulty lies in switching from virgin polyamide to recycled polyamide without anyone being able to see the difference. This is part of our strong commitments for a more sustainable economy.

What major changes do you see in the consumption habits of your customers?

There is a background noise that is still quite present! My view is that our brand responsibility, the reason consumers buy from us, prefer us, is that they trust us. In my opinion, trust is the mainspring of the existence of a brand. This contract will now increasingly include the dimensions of social and environmental responsibility. This will become a prerequisite expected by consumers. For our part, we put ourselves in a position to be able to answer the questions we are asked and to be proud of the answers we provide.