{"id":2921,"date":"2019-10-21T10:42:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T08:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grantalexander.com\/en\/?p=2921"},"modified":"2025-08-27T10:07:34","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T08:07:34","slug":"challenges-of-luxury-between-brand-dna-and-the-need-for-transformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grantalexander.com\/en\/our-news\/challenges-of-luxury-between-brand-dna-and-the-need-for-transformation\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenges of Luxury: Between Brand DNA and the Need for Transformation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><br><a href=\"http:\/\/www.grantalexander.com\/nos-consultants\/#anne-marie-deblonde\">Anne-Marie Deblonde<\/a> is Director of the Distribution Practice at Grant Alexander and an expert in the digitalization of organizations. Passionate about observing shifts that generate new challenges and professions, she analyzes trend evolutions in the Retail and Media sectors, as well as within Brands.<br>She shares with us her exchanges on these subjects with peers, clients, and candidates, and brings us the perspective of <strong>Val\u00e9rie Duret<\/strong>, a retail expert in the luxury sector. Val\u00e9rie\u2019s career has spanned <strong>Emanuel Ungaro, Diane von Furstenberg, and Burberry<\/strong>, where she was Retail Director for Northern Europe.<br>Here are the key insights\u2026<br>The retail world has been impacted by digital transformation for more than a decade, yet <strong>luxury remains a unique field<\/strong>. Between strong or emerging brand images, brands with significant financial means and those with fewer resources, those that embraced digital in time and those that still struggle to take the leap\u2014how are luxury brands managing to transform both the <strong>user experience<\/strong> and the <strong>sales experience<\/strong>?<br>Discover Val\u00e9rie Duret\u2019s perspective, in which she highlights both barriers and solutions, emphasizing the importance of striking the right balance between <strong>human touch<\/strong> and <strong>digital innovation<\/strong>.<br>Through <strong>field shopping observations<\/strong> worldwide and among DNVBs (<em>Digitally Native Vertical Brands<\/em>), Val\u00e9rie identifies what she calls <em>\u201cadvanced experiences\u201d<\/em> and shares her convictions about the <strong>re-enchantment of the luxury consumer\u2019s purchasing journey<\/strong>. She stresses the real risk of sustainability for brands that fail to transform.<br>Her reflections, illustrated with concrete examples, address several aspects of the value chain:<br>the evolving role of designers,<br>the place of the physical retail space within the omnichannel ecosystem,<br>the integration of <em>digital in-store<\/em> solutions.<br>She also questions the consequences of fashion conceived by <strong>AI and data scientists<\/strong>, as well as the <strong>new mission of sales associates and their managers<\/strong>\u2014fostering greater inclusivity with clients while also engaging in upstream profiling.<br>Val\u00e9rie explains why and how she conducts this work of analysis and transformation, all while navigating the inevitable <strong>resistances to change<\/strong>.<br><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.grantalexander.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/ok_Anne-Marie-interview-Val\u00e9rie-DURET.pdf\">Read the full interview<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anne-Marie Deblonde is Director of the Distribution Practice at Grant Alexander and an expert in the digitalization of organizations. Passionate about observing shifts that generate new challenges and professions, she analyzes trend evolutions in the Retail and Media sectors, as well as within Brands.She shares with us her exchanges on these subjects with peers, clients, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"activity":[6],"topical-themes":[],"news-type":[39],"class_list":["post-2921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Challenges of Luxury: Between Brand DNA and the Need for Transformation - Grant Alexander<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.grantalexander.com\/en\/our-news\/challenges-of-luxury-between-brand-dna-and-the-need-for-transformation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Challenges of Luxury: Between Brand DNA and the Need for Transformation - Grant Alexander\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Anne-Marie Deblonde is Director of the Distribution Practice at Grant Alexander and an expert in the digitalization of organizations. 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