Cardiff-based online booking firm creates “store of the future” concept

ThinkBooker, an online booking company headquartered in Cardiff, has developed a personal shopping experience for London-based fashion boutique Browns.

Working with Browns, ThinkBooker has created an online service that’ll be used in two of the fashion company’s London stores. It’s aimed at transforming the shopping experience.

Founded in 1970, Browns is among London’s most influential fashion companies – having been responsible for discovering people such as John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Christopher Kane.

The retailer was also the first in London to offer designers such as Calvin Klein, Armani, Jil Sander and Ralph Lauren. And now it’s turning to the latest technology to help customers shop efficiently.

In 2015, global online fashion platform Farfetch acquired Browns, and it’s currently developing a “Store of the Future” initiative. The latter uses technology to transform customer insight.

As part of this strategy, ThinkBooker was hired to develop a booking tool to support the personal shopping experience at Browns. It’s an extension of the existing brownsfashion.com platform.

Designed to match the look and feel of Browns established brand identity, the system allows clients to book a personal shopping experience on a computer, tablet or smartphone.

They can select a specific store, date and time, as well as the stylist of their choice or alternatively allow the store to select the most suitable stylist based on their needs.

Fanny Hawkins, Farfetch’s store of the future partners executive, said: “The delivery of an online personal shopper experience for the Browns stores is an important element of our vision to use the advancements in technology to free up time and help make the consumer experience more human.”

“We spoke to several online booking providers, but thinkBooker were the only ones who could meet our exact brief of delivering the full booking journey within the Browns brand, and to deliver the system to the very short timeframe that we were working to.

“The team at thinkBooker have done an amazing job turning this project into a reality in such a short space of time and we are looking forward to working with them to further develop our offering in the future”

Gareth Rees Jones, managing director of ThinkBooker said: “We are very proud to have been chosen by Farfetch and Browns to deliver a key part of their ‘Store of the Future’ strategy.  

“As a fully bespoke online booking and scheduling solution, we work across many different industries but it is really exciting to be working with such a well-regarded and pioneering brand within the retail industry.

He added: “With a very short timeframe in which to deliver the project, it certainly presented our UX, design and development teams with a challenge.

“But the willingness of the team at Farfetch to work collaboratively with us, meant that we were able to meet the deadline for launch and to provide a highly effective online booking solution for their clients”.