Underlines talks with Carole Baguet, Lingerie Buyer at Voisins of Jersey which re-opened to the public on 12th May (some four weeks ago) to find out the ‘new normal’ of retailing. It is the oldest family-owned department store in Britain, founded in 1837. They opened limited fitting rooms on 20th May with cleaning after each customer and quarantine of clothing for cleaning after it is tried on. The return to retail here is a tale of hope to those UK retailers who cannot open until 15th June or indeed early July.
How have customers responded to the re-opening?
“Customers have been really happy and relieved to engage with us once again we have enjoyed getting back to work and to some kind of normality. At the start we allowed up to 70 customers into the store at any one time, which has now increased to 90. Currently we are not as busy during the lunch hours as many office workers are still working from home and we believe that this will become the new norm,” comments Carole.
We are obviously missing the tourists at this time of year but there is a strong desire among the community to support local businesses and shop locally. So although we are catching up with our regular loyal customers we are also seeing new customers coming in. Overall, customer numbers are down but on a positive note our A.T.V. has gone up… those who are coming in are having a bit of a splurge and want to treat themselves to a bit of retail therapy. We are entering the second week for our 20% Thank-you promotion for Frontline workers and we had our busiest Saturday since re-opening the store so we are expecting another busy week [w/c 8th June].
And what product types are selling best?
To start with we found the majority of our sales coming from swimwear (Seafolly , Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger etc), lounge bras, bralettes (e.g. the Chantelle Soft Stretch, Wacoal bralette and Sloggi Zero Feel) and our ever popular Calvin Klein table pants. Sports bras have increased in popularity as more customers took up running and cycling during lockdown. And I know quite a few ardent fans of Joe Wicks! Some ladies have put on weight during lockdown and some have lost weight so this is when our ‘eyeballing’ expertise comes in handy.
And how are you working with fitting advice?
We have posters in the fitting rooms we are using (which are sanitised after every customer) which show Good fit V. Bad fit and because some of the fitting rooms are a good size we can stand at the required 2 metre distance with the door open and give guidance that way. We have also demonstrated on ourselves how to measure with a tape and let a customer copy what we are doing on themselves with a sanitised tape measure.
We do stress however that this is a rough guide only and so much depends on their shape and how different brands fit. We are also checking that customers are not duplicating the options they are trying on i.e. same size bra but in a different colour as this reduces the amount of stock that has to be quarantined afterwards. With the heatwave we had rails full of swimwear in quarantine!
What changes did you make during COVID shutdown in Voisins?
We currently have plans in the pipeline to expand on the bra information we provide on our website in a bespoke, educational, fun way and through social media channels to inspire our customers…… Watch this space!
During lockdown our Marketing team worked on getting Fantasie and Freya basic lingerie online and we will be adding more brands to the website in due course. We are continuing to offer a free delivery service for phone and online orders over £20 to those customers unable to get into town.
