Galeries Lafayette - New shopping experience

Smart Hanger

- Galeries Lafayette -

Reinventing retail experience on the most famous avenue in the world.

About

During my internship at Unistudio, I contributed to a major project for Galeries Lafayette’s flagship store on the Champs Élysées, designed to reinvent the customer experience. The focus was on creating a “smart hanger,” a hybrid between a traditional hanger and a digital assistant. This innovation allowed customers to check sizes, availability, and prices, and to have their selected items delivered directly to the fitting room. By handling these practical tasks, the smart hanger freed sales assistants to focus on a more personalized role as stylists and advisors.

I was involved in several key stages of the project, from the early exploratory workshops to the final validation of the concept by Galeries Lafayette’s team. This gave me the opportunity to see the project evolve from initial ideas into a concrete solution. The smart hanger was officially unveiled with the grand opening of the Champs Élysées store in March 2019, marking a new way of blending technology with luxury retail.

Details

Project while intern at Unistudio, Lille
2018-2019

Unique place, unique experience

Galeries Lafayette has been planning on opening a new store on the Champs Élysées in Paris. The expectations are high as this new store is intended to offer customers an innovative shopping experience. It will bring a brand new dimension to the Galeries Lafayette retail network, acting as a one-of-a-kind venue, somewhere between a lifestyle concept store and an evolving event space.

Understanding the stakes

Through various focus groups and several workshops with the Galeries Lafayette team, we spent some time clarifying the boundaries of the project. The main aim was to find ways of improving the client's experience, while creating a special connection between sales assistants and customers. As a consequence, the smart hanger will become part of the shopping experience by providing useful information. This will also allow the sales assistants total on the role of personal stylists and spend more time counselling clients.

Reinventing the Hanger

The hanger is a simple object known to everyone. Working on this classical item was perhaps not the easiest of tasks. However, hundreds of ideas were gathered and sketched. After a while, all of these were narrowed down to just 15 "visions" of how we envisioned the smart hanger, each of them providing a different experience. We presented them to the Galeries Lafayette team in order to discuss and collect valuable feedback.

Hundreds of ideas, 15 Visions, 3 Concepts, 1 Hanger

The 15 visions were finally reworked with a much more pragmatic approach taking into account all of the constraints and reduced to three final concepts conveying different messages. The smart hanger interface and user experience was also clarified. After presenting these concepts to the client's team in charge of the project, we received the Go for developing their choice of the hanger.

Design for manufacturing

Components were sourced, subcontractor contacted and some adjustments had to be made in order for this concept to become manufacturable. The interface was developed based on graphical messages, easily understandable by everyone regardless of their native language. The R&D and electronics design were carried out by Unistudio's partners. Although I did not personally work on this part of the project, I find it interesting to share because of how satisfying it is to see a concept finally becoming reality.

Come and try it for yourself

The new Galeries Lafayette store has been unveiled on the 28th of March 2019. The smart hangers were made in time for this special occasion. If you happen to be in the area, do not miss out the chance to explore the store and to try this experience for yourself.