Baume & Mercier

B&M is a luxury Swiss watchmaker owned by Richemont, a luxury group that owns a number of prestigious Maisons from Cartier and Montblanc, to IWC and A. Lang & Söhne. Baume & Mercier came to R/GA to have us revamp their site experience and, more importantly, set them up to transition from an online brochure to a full e-commerce experience. This was a big pivot for a traditional Swiss watch brand, where most sales were usually contracted through extensive authorized dealer networks, each with their own rules and requirements. R/GA’s challenge was to not only stack up to the highly orchestrated experience that most watch-buyers expect in store, but to also do it in a way where different paths to purchase could be swapped in and out based on the agreements in each territory.

What were we solving for

Baume & Mercier’s main goal in coming to R/GA was to leverage our experience developing storefronts for brands like, Nike, Lancome and Burberry and ultimately help them make a fairly meticulous progression towards including e-commerce capabilities into their sales and distribution network. This would make them a first in this space, as most luxury timepiece brands tended to work exclusively through authorized distribution markets, many of which were fairly negative towards the idea of direct sales. Because of this the team had to work out multiple avenues for purchase, as well as approaches to both direct and indirect distribution that would be just transparent enough to the user. In addition to the redesign of their web property, R/GA was asked to come up with a campaign strategy that would drive awareness and engagement with the new site. I was assigned as the systems lead for the project, along with a team of individuals representing creative, planning, and technology.

Goals

Modernize the site experience, while also paying reference to the spirit of the Hamptons.

Enable the hybrid commerce capabilities that could be modified based on dealer restrictions.

Generate a campaign strategy for the rollout, focusing on awareness and repeat engagement.

The work

Interaction design

Since much of the experience was aimed at modeling some of the more tacit aspects of the luxury buying process, the team spent a good amount of time in the early phases of design observing the sales process of multiple luxury dealers on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, which was a sprawling retail district just north of the city’s central loop. The team spent a lot of time observing, participating in, and asking questions about the sales process, typically under the guise of customers. Notes and observations were brought back to the team where key aspects of the experience were iterated on in deeper and deeper levels of fidelity. The wireframes below represent some of the final iterations, following two rounds of click through testing that we did, both with a convenience sample and group of sales reps in the luxury goods space.

Final wireframes for the homepage. The team went through multiple iterations. We landed on this approach since it maximized access to the campaign related content B&M wanted to most promote.

Catalog went through multiple iterations as well, largely based on the “browsing the case” experience while shopping for watches. Some of the more playful takes on the metaphor were tossed out after testing, since the novel interactions got in the way of the purchase evaluation process.

Favoriting modeled itself off of the showcasing process that dealers used when presenting multiple watches to customers for purchase consideration.

The product detail page sought to balance the technical aspects of the product with it’s history and providence. Both aspects were very important in the consideration of a watch as luxury and status ascribing, and played highly in the decision making process of most watch buyers, especially new ones.

  • Cart Workflow

    Checkout and payment workflow

  • Call to purchase workflow

    Call to purchase workflow for AD territories.

  • Your bag is empty

    Your bag, empty state

  • Cart with Linea 10036

    Cart with Linea ref. 10036

  • Checkout flow

    Checkout, shipping details

  • Checkout payment

    Checkout, Payment details

  • Checkout summary

    Checkout, order summary

  • Checkout confirmation

    Checkout, confirmation

  • Confirmation email

    Confirmation email

  • Order status change

    Order status change

  • Check order status

    Checking order status

Creative

B&M’s branding centered around the idea of the American “golden 50s,” and was deeply rooted in classical depictions of places like the Hamptons. Ideas such as luxury and leisure played heavily into their creative and product executions, all with a Swiss view from the outside in. The creative challenge was largely to communicate a lot of those ideals, but in a way that translated to a more modern interpretation. To do that the team spent a lot of time exploring modern day analogs to some of the more traditional signifiers of those ideas. The Hamptons imagery remained, but intertwined with more contemporary visual queues that helped buttress some of the older visuals with the new.

Visual execution for the product detail page. This is one of the three that we ended up finalizing with the creative team over at B&M

Additional campaigns

In addition to the site itself, the team worked out a number of specific campaigns centered around the rollout of the new store-front for Valentine’s Day. Campaigns were designed to cycle in and through this period. Driving users to the new experience, and connecting any purchase behavior to future engagement.

  • Campaign time captured

    Campaign, Time Captured

  • Campaign, time shared

    Campaign, Time shared

  • Campaign, time beloved

    Campaign, Time beloved

  • Campaigns featured

    Campaigns featured on the B&M Homepage

Outcome

The new Baume & Mercier site launched on Valentine’s Day 2013, and allowed them to become one of the first few Swiss watch dealers selling their wares online. Where they originally started their e-commerce footprint in unclaimed territories, now B&M does most of their watch sales online, providing a mix of purchase options to suited to an individual’s purchase needs.