Printemps To Open New York Store Following Luxury Virtual Launch

French luxury department store group Printemps is to open its first international store at One Wall Street, New York and has created a virtual store as its seeks to create a global omni-channel platform.

The moves underline the Paris-based retailer’s desire to become a global luxury player and to open up new physical and virtual markets.

Marking the brand’s first U.S. initiative. Printemps will open in the historic 50-story landmark building in the Financial District with a 54,000 sq ft, two level-store in Spring 2024.

Reflecting the brand’s decision to embark on a digital transformation, the U.S. Printemps store will be on a different scale to its Paris flagship, taking a local approach and dovetailing with its e-commerce platform, meaning everything available in-store will be available on the U.S. website.

Meanwhile American customers will also have access to everything available on its French online services.

Printemps digital marketing director Morgane Lopes says that the U.S. “was always on our roadmap” and stresses that the focus will be on creating an “experiential lab” where Printemps can try things out in “the most digitally advanced market in the world”.

She adds: “It will provide an opportunity for us to learn about new types of service and leverage New York best practice across our whole business. Things are moving so quickly in Asia and the U.S. that, as a French retailer, we have to keep up.”

Printemps has tapped seasoned executive Laura Lendrum as the CEO of Printemps America Inc. Lendrum previously served as president for Saint Laurent, Gucci and Ralph Lauren for the North American market.

Parisian interior designer, Laura Gonzalez, will be the architect on the project to create a ‘Paris meets New York’ twist on the design, says the company.

Printemps Virtual Store Launch

Printemps has also expanded its digital offer, earlier this year launching a virtual department store which Lopes describes as an “imaginary, fantasy Printemps, where nature has reclaimed its rights and the products have been modelled in three dimensions.”

She says the idea was to create a virtual store which would engage its luxury consumers and which was also extremely easy to use for its core store shopper, aged 45-55, who may not be especially tech savvy.

Given just 70 days to complete the project as part of a repositioning of Printemps, Lopes says that the company did not go down the Metaverse route because it did not feel that the technology would be familiar to its customer base. What the company did want to do is expand the range of luxury brands on its roster and make them very easy to access on a different platform.

“The luxury market is changing and we wanted to bring Printemps to a wider audience and become a place for more brands,” says Lopes. “But luxury does not always work well online because of the loss of experience and so creating a digital store that was even more beautiful and extravagant than the real flagship is our attempt to change that perception and bring something new to digital retail.”

Printemps NFTs Promotion

Launching the platform, Printemps.com also offered anyone purchasing a product from the virtual store the chance to enter a prize draw to win one of 30 NFTs created in collaboration with the artist Romain Froquet via the Arianee NFT platform.

This allowed the 30 holders to receive the original painting by the artist Romain Froquet, exhibited in the atrium of Printemps Haussmann during the campaign.

Lopes says that this was intended as more than a gimmick and rather was a way of reintroducing the notions of rarity, exclusivity and uniqueness from the physical artistic world to the digital world.

“Our expectation was that for the winners this would be their first NFT ownership, so it was a way of helping them understand the technology and to make luxury feel special in a virtual environment,” says Lopes.

Printemps Group was founded in 1865 by Jules Jaluzot and operates 20 department stores across France and nine Citadium stores. Online it acquired fashion and beauty specialist Place des Tendances in 2013, and Made in Design, a leading online store for designer furniture, lighting, and decorations, in 2019.