TheIndustry.fashion LIVE! Collagerie on blending content and commerce for an enhanced customer experience

During TheIndustry.fashion LIVE! 'A New Era For Fashion E-commerce' in partnership with Noatum Logistics and Pocket Styler, a crowd of fashion industry professionals spent the day learning about the areas of innovation businesses should focus on to meet the demands of today's consumer and drive business forward for the future.

For the third panel of the day, Lucinda Chambers and Serena Hood, Co-founders of Collagerie discussed blending content and commerce for an enhanced customer experience.

Lucinda Chambers and Serena Hood for TheIndustry.fashion LIVE! 'A New Era For Fashion E-commerce'

Chambers and Hood worked with some of the most prestigious luxury brands in fashion – from Marc Jacobs to Marni, Prada and Armani – and at the highest echelons of fashion publishing. Their careers collided at British Vogue where Chambers was its celebrated fashion director and Hood its executive market and fashion director.

After leaving the publication the pair caught up for coffee and hatched a plan to launch Collagerie, a platform that would combine their expertise in storytelling and curation across fashion, beauty and lifestyle.

Collagerie blends content and commerce and high street and high end brands into one compelling and chic platform, which was launched just two months before the pandemic in 2020.

It works directly with brands to curate their product for its discerning audience and has also worked in partnership with major names in British retail to create collaborative collections.

"We wanted Collagerie to be a beautiful journey - making all products across all price points talk to each other in a beautiful way. The essence of the business is to bring people the most life-enhancing, fabulous product," emphasised Chambers during the event.

Blending content with commerce has been central to Collagerie's strategy since the very beginning. "Before launching we had so many visions, but the first thing we thought of was 'In The Mood', Chambers explained.

Expertly curating the best of fashion, interiors, beauty and lifestyle, Collagerie's 'In The Mood' concept brings together various products in themed edits, such as The Great Outdoors, It's All Greek, Tangerine Dream, Picture Postcard Style and High Society, to name a few.

This offers consumers the perfect opportunity to discover products and brands through content that appeals to them and their interests.

"Curation is also a fabulous way to champion new brands as we're able to shine a spotlight on them," added Chambers.

Both Hood and Chambers took this a step further, recently evolving the business to support brands via its own marketplace. "We have transformed the business from a media, affiliate model to also include a marketplace - creating a hybrid experience between content and commerce," Hood explained.

In addition to content on its website and social media, Collagerie has also found success with its newsletter, Hood admitted during the panel.

"I didn't anticipate how engaging and popular our newsletter would be," she said. "We handpick the content and it continues to be the biggest driver to our business."

Collaborations have also been a huge growth driver for Collagerie. Most notably across fashion, the business partnered with Jigsaw to launch two clothing and accessories collections.

"Through our partnerships, we can create brand-new collections or inject newness into existing ranges with brands," said Chambers.

"For this, we will deep dive into a business to understand its heritage, what it wants and how we can bring some excitement whilst still respecting the brand."

"We also get so many insights into how our community are shopping - what brands, styles, categories etc. So, we keep all this in mind when collaborating with brands as we can spot what should do well," added Hood.

Looking ahead, Hood and Chambers hinted at the potential to integrate artificial intelligence into the business, with personalised recommendations amongst their ideas on how to scale curation and enhance its retail experience.