Bell & Ross to Open Store in Australia
If you’re in Australia and get the urge to shop for a watch, The Block Arcade on Collins Street in Melbourne should be your first stop. Watches of Switzerland already has a shop located at the entrance to the 125-year-old shopping arcade and a pair of luxury watch brands will be joining them soon.
TAG Heuer will be moving in to a spot nearby at St. Collins Lane, the luxury mall adjacent to the Novotel Hotel, while Bell & Ross has plans to lease a shop in the original arcade. This location will be the first standalone store for Bell & Ross, which has 12 more stores worldwide.
Luxury Watch Brands Slow to Embrace Ecommerce
Many of us have become totally addicted to shopping online, with good reason. When you can order practically anything from the comfort of home by using your laptop or smartphone, why waste time running all over town?
So why have luxury watch and jewelry brands lagged behind in this lucrative area? Studies have shown that luxury customers are greatly influenced by digital information and eager to order items online but the brands have been reluctant to accommodate them.
L2 is a New York business intelligence service that studies the digital competence of brands so these guys know what a company has to do to make it in today’s market. In a new report Reid Sherard of L2 examined what luxury brands need to do in order to make ecommerce work for them. “The most basic feature brands need to be implementing is offering some kind of call to action on their websites,” said Sherard. “Nearly half of the brands surveyed lacked any sort of next step to purchase, making their sites glorified brochures.”
“Beyond that, Watches & Jewelry brands under-index in almost every e-commerce best practice, including offering cart continuity, single page checkout, clarity around the return policy, providing shipping estimates, live chat, pricing transparency, concierge services and click-and-collect.”
Sounds like it’s time that the makers of luxury watches come into the current century and make more of an effort to sell their wares online.
