Luxottica Launches Eye Hub New Concept Retail in Melbourne
The Italy-based industry giant Luxottica Group, a $6.6 billion company, has recently launched its first Eye Hub optical retail store in Melbourne, Australia. Designed by E2, a designer of London’s Millennium Dome. Eye Hub is a part of OPSM, which is the equivalent of LensCrafters in the United States. This new concept optical retail store is the first of its kind to include a simulator room with wind, snow, water etc to test the eyeglasses and sunglasses of its glare and wind-resistance features. It also boasts a touch-screen interactive mirrors that allow people to play back their new look and share the image with friends from social networking sites such as Facebook. The new store has a kids area where parents can leave their kids while they are shopping and experiencing around. The store’s floor plan is in the shape of an eyeball.
This new store costs 2 to 3 times more than a normal LensCrafters store in the United States, with 1500 square meters. Based on the article published in the ads section of New York Times on July 20,2010, Luxottica is going to open 10-15 stores in this kind in the coming 2 to 3 years in China, UK and USA.
The setting of the stores also includes a concierge who meets customers at the door. Besides selling eyeglasses and sunglasses, Lux expects to use this store to conduct live research and development, and then copy successful experience to use in other existing retail stores in the future.
“If the Internet was perfect for everybody, obviously no one would shop at retail stores,” said Chris Beer, chief executive of Asia Pacific, greater China and South Africa for Luxottica. “The reality is, you need to create a connection, create a personal experience, and that’s what we’ve done.”
Luxottica was starting to recover from a tough 2009, its 2010 1st quarter sales rose by 6% comparing with the same period of 2009. Lux hopes that the new type of retail experience would help recover its sales. Luxottica is facing two very tough situation. On the one hand, it needs to address the sales slump arising from the recession, on the other hand, it also needs to face the siphoning of eyeglasses customers by online eyeglasses shopping.
Can Luxottica really collect information from customers through the new store? I guess not. Apple may be successful in doing the similar stores, as Apple is always releasing new things from new ideas, but the eyeglasses and sunglasses are just two pieces of lenses. Are these lenses fancy enough to lure visitors to buy?
In addition, I think the online eyeglasses buyers, in most of the cases, are not the ones who will have interest in Eye Hub’s eyeglasses. The best result possible for Eye Hub is grab a niche market who really really does not care about money.