Business of personalisation – Farfetch UK

Personalised shopping experience doesn’t always mean entirely bespoke tailored clothes; sometimes it’s a personalised homepage, fashion guides, custom AI-generated recommendations to create a seamless shopping journey tailored to customers. Farfetch is one such e-commerce platform leading the field of personalised luxury in the UK.

Founded in 2007, Farfetch started as an e-commerce marketplace and has transformed into a global technology platform bringing together nearly 1,300 of the world’s most popular brands, luxury boutiques, and department stores to customers worldwide. Its commitment to experimentation and data-led platforms has made it one of the best digital eCommerce websites for fashion.

Farfetch firmly believes in encouraging a companywide culture of experimentation so the platform can offer the best possible digital experience to its customers. One of Farfetch’s biggest successes has been the creation of ‘Inspire,’ its internal recommendation engine. Initially, the innovative marketplace utilized an external solution that generated a personalised experience for users, similar to other platforms. However, soon after, Farfetch’s ambition to offer a genuinely luxurious one-on-one experience drove them to build its in-house solution. This allows the platform to provide tailored offers to its customers, which are often location-specific, taking into account the country, language, and time zone. Today it is an essential part of its offering both to its customers and partners an entirely personalised experience at every digital touchpoint.

Taking digital personalisation to the next level, Farfetch has linked with personal styling start-up Wishi to bring AI and human-vetted style recommendations to shoppers. It brings new product suggestions to shoppers and a unique kind of exposure to the brands on the platform.

The platform didn’t stop here. The company had recently revealed its plan to extend its pilot ‘Switch Model’ experience making Farfetch the first global luxury e-commerce platform to use this technology. Under this hyper-personalised service, customers shopping on Farfetch will be able to see how the products look on different sizes and skin tones as they shop. Taking it a step ahead, Farfetch customers will be able to choose multiple products to create a whole look under its ‘Fitting Room Technology.’ The luxury platform will also allow a small selection of private clients to have their images digitised to style the outfits on themselves.

These recent innovations take into account the diverse and individual needs of people in mind to provide a really immersive and personalised shopping experience. By integrating their AR/VR shopping experiences, namely ‘Switch Model,’ ‘Fitting Room,’ and ‘Be Your Model,’ Farfetch is setting an example for other luxury bespoke platforms in the industry. 

Following in its steps is another hyper-personalised platform, ‘Yours.Truly.’ curated specially to help people understand their own connection to colours while discovering their individual sense of dressing. The basis of the platform is the colour analysis that matches customers to colours that work best for them and help bring out their inherent personality. While colours are an essential determinant of online shopping, it often doesn’t prioritise as the material or design may. Even if colours are considered, most times, people are not aware of the ones that fit them perfectly. Yours. Truly. utilizes a sophisticated algorithm that analyses customer’s natural tones, which are then reviewed by professional image consultants to create a palette that is personalised to the user.

The tailored journey does not end here. Yours. Truly. Brings together independent, contemporary and ethical fashion houses to create unique and exciting fashion lists of premium and quality labels to ensure an experience that is exclusive to customers’ charcteristics and consciousness. Furthermore, as part of its membership program, users on the platform can browse their own shop, updated weekly, allowing them to save or visit stores with the available outfits.

Yours. Truly much like Farfetch believes that every person has a signature look. Their unique platform is an easy, digital, personalised fashion experience that will help users find it.