YNAP doubles luxury personal shopping team, big focus on US

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 9, 2019

Yoox-Net-A-Porter is ramping up its ultra-luxury offer as it targets the highest spending customers and said that it’s going to add more than 100 new personal shoppers and client relations managers within its Luxury Division. That means Net-A-Porter and Mr Porter.

They’ll serve the two e-tail sites’ “most loyal customers”, who include some shoppers with the kind of annual fashion budgets that most consumers can only dream of. They’re known as EIPs (Extremely Important People) and come from the firm’s global client base. 

The move marks the single largest client relations recruitment drive in its 19-year history and also sees the creation of new Personal Shopping and Client Relations hubs in “important global locations”. That means San Francisco and Dallas in the US, which have been “identified for their burgeoning customer base and increasing levels of demand for the enhanced service.”

The company also plans to strengthen the offer across the US West Coast, including LA, as the firm develops its ‘localisation strategy’ in order to offer “tailored services to luxury customers informed by a rich understanding of the region and related lifestyle.”

The company added that the doubling of the team “is in direct response to [the] increased desire for personalised service and the growth of the EIP customer segment.”

So what do customers actually get with this service? Multi-lingual and “highly skilled” staff who act as personal shoppers “by invitation only”. The company said this “one-to-one relationship grows organically according to customer needs, both on and offline, from tailored styling recommendations, closet consultations, previews and bespoke production of items, through to designer access and invitations and exclusive industry events.”

And it added that “striking the balance between technology and the human touch is vital to success; the team are supported by the wealth of customer insight harnessed over nearly two decades, with AI and data assistance serving to inform the person-to-person contact, bringing the customers exactly what they need, where they need it.”

YNAP Luxury Division president Alison Loehnis also said that the role of the personal shopper “has evolved hugely in recent years and today our team fulfil a variety of different roles. Not only do they anticipate our customers' ever-changing luxury needs and solve their wardrobe dilemmas before they even arise, they become part of their daily lives. Local knowledge and an understanding of lifestyle has never been more important.”