Zalando, the leading e-commerce platform for fashion and lifestyle in Europe, is teaming up with the media hub, Highsnobiety. Together they are launching a new, innovative, e-tail format. The new section that is featured on Zalando’s app and website, is called Stories. By offering an innovative way of shopping, the section highlights local- and international creativity and offers customers immersive inspiration.
— We have over 50 million customers on Zalando. And what it’s fair to say is that when you look around, cohort customers are much more into inspiration. We know from research, that some of them spend 50% of the purchase journey just looking for inspiration and that 70% of the purchase decisions made are actually while seeking inspiration. This is a mode for many of us and that’s not only through the rise of social media becoming quite apparent. What’s important for us is that I know that we move beyond this idea of the purely transactional relationship we have with customers, but rather inspire them and become the destination where they come to get inspired and to find out what’s happening in the world and what’s happening in culture, commented Anne Pascual, Senior Vice President Product Design at Zalando
By offering customers insight and inspiration, the section will be marrying shopping and storytelling. The new content hub features different voices from cultural and creative industries and has guest editors who share their creative visions and style inspiration. The first edition features international pop star Charli XCX, singer and producer Sega Bodega, Berlin-based florist Misha Todirașcu and hair stylist Taiga Sato.
— At Highsnobiety, storytelling is the heart and soul of everything that we do. We’ve always tried to master the art of turning stories into products and products into stories. That’s essentially what we want with the Stories at Zalando, bring that skillset into the partnership. But I think the most fun was really that it was a true collaboration, teaming up with the Zalando creative-, production-, talent-, and buying teams because, of course, Stories at Zalando are not just about the content. Still, it’s about matching that content with the right product. Stories allow brand partners to engage with an exciting new audience. It allows Zalando to tap into a significantly more exciting product that these brand partners have to offer, says David Fischer, Founder and Publisher of Highsnobiety
The section has been in the works for the last 12 months and will be updated regularly to offer a constant stream of inspiration. Which, according to Fischer, is more challenging than one could think.
— The first 12 months of the partnership, we’ve been working on producing hundreds of stories and content pieces, looks, interviews and videos. Now it reached a point where we felt that we had a great archive of content, that could go live. We have good sequencing within that content. We can finally deliver on that promise of constant inspiration because I think many retailers try this themselves and then realize quickly that it’s not so easy to deliver inspiration 24/7.
