See inside the luxury shopping village that's like Disneyland if you're looking to pick up Dior and Gucci at a discount
Alexandra Bacon
- Bicester Village is an open-air luxury shopping outlet located in Oxfordshire in the UK.
- Its main appeal is heavy discounts on high-end luxury brands like Dior, Prada, and Gucci.
An hour outside London by train is Bicester Village — a discount open-air shopping center presented like a quaint English town.
The village is set up for tourists: red telephone boxes, pristine streets, and friendly staff in flat caps to guide you through your shopping experience.
For its millions of visitors every year — some of which travel from China and the Middle East, for example — it seems like a quintessential English shopping experience.
With the added benefit of heavy discounts on high-end designer brands from luxury conglomerates like LVMH and Kering.
Discounting can be a dirty word for luxury retailers, which are keen to maintain exclusivity and scarcity to justify sky-high prices.
In July, L Catterton, an LVMH-backed private equity fund, bought a £1.5 billion ($1.9) stake in Value Retail, the parent company of Bicester Village. And this concept is soon to open in the US.
It shows that discounted luxury means big business.
So luxury brands must toe the line between these discounts and keeping an air of luxury in the shopping experience.
Bicester Village is a perfect example of how luxury brands can sell off items for a discount without sacrificing the premium shopping experience.
Business Insider went there to find out how it does this:
From the moment you arrive at the train station in London where you catch the train to Bicester Village, it feels like a premium experience.
Staff are on hand to tell you when the next train is and to direct you to the train platform. And if you have time to spare, there's a plush waiting area specifically for people going to Bicester Village.
Bicester Village has its own train station at the other end. Loads of passengers got off the busy train and appeared to come prepared with large suitcases for their new purchases.
Located just an hour's train journey from London, the shopping center is located close enough for tourists to make a day trip of it.
It's clear the experience is targeted at tourists. Signs are written in Arabic, Mandarin, and English.
The outlet attracts more than 7 million visitors a year.
When you arrive at the train station in Bicester, there's a Ralph Lauren Coffee stand, a large, comfy waiting area, and a staff member to greet you — not a common feature in UK train stations.
For a UK visitor, you don't feel like you're arriving in an English town. It feels unsettlingly clean and friendly compared to the reality of many English towns.
Walking down the tree-lined paths from the station, you could almost be tricked into believing you were in a quaint English town.
The gardens are carefully manicured, and a path guides your way into the shopping center. It helps to build up the idea that you're entering into a premium experience — and feel a far cry from sales racks and other discount malls.
But there's something eerie about this Disneyland-esque shopping center — the buildings look more like a film set than a real village.
All the buildings are the same design and height. Concierges dressed in aprons and flat caps greet people in the streets, and food and drink trucks are spread throughout the village.
The artificial design of the place does make it convenient for those visiting. You're never too far from a concierge to advise you on your queries or guide you to your next shop.
There are plenty of places to sit and rest without fearing being moved along.
The red telephone boxes proved popular with tourists, who took photos in a seemingly quintessential English environment.
There are no shortages of places to take photos and show off your outlandishly large shopping bags.
Bicester Village feels like a luxury shopping experience, from the clean streets to the immaculately presented stores.
You'd be forgiven for forgetting you were at a discount mall.
LVMH isn't widely known to discount its brands. But tucked away in Bicester, shoppers can get discounts at LVMH-owned brands like Dior, Fendi, and Loewe.
Dior proved particularly popular with visitors; it had the longest line throughout the day.
Quiet luxury favorite Loro Piana also has a store at Bicester, where visitors can pick up discounted versions of their cashmere sweaters, which normally retail at around $1,700.
High-end stores like Balenciaga and Gucci are presented much like their full-price counterparts.
These high-end stores typically have only one size of each item on display. Staff are then on hand to provide other sizes if the customer needs. This helps to avoid the stores feeling too crowed.
The Bottega Veneta store had an array of bags displayed without it feeling too crowded.
Kering-owned Bottega Veneta had several of its popular leather goods on offer for around 30% off retail prices.
Many stores like Prada had a full-price rack of the current season clothes.
The prospect of heavy discounts draws people in then they may be persuaded to splash out on some of the full-price goods, too.
These luxury items are definitely still expensive but considerably less than retail prices.
Even when discounted, these clothes, bags, and shoes aren't cheap — so keeping the shopping experience feeling premium is still important.
Miu Miu, owned by Prada, had dresses discounted to £950 ($1,220) from £1,850 ($2,380).
There are also more affordable brands like Ralph Lauren, and even these don't feel like discount stores.
While these stores have more clothes on display than the higher-end stores, it manages to avoid feeling overcrowded or messy.
There are also beauty stores and candle stores like Diptyque selling products at considerable discounts.
Customers can snap up expensive candles and beauty products.
The restaurants in the village are also upscale, like Mediterranean restaurant and deli, Ottolenghi.
Cheaper chains like Pret a Manger are designed to blend in with the same style of buildings and comfortable outdoor seating.
Bicester Village in the UK is one of 11 shopping villages worldwide owned by Value Retail.
It has similar villages across Europe in cities like Milan, Paris, and Madrid. It's also expanded into China with shopping villages in Suzhou and Shanghai — the Shanghai Village is located in the same district as the Shanghai Disney Resort.
The parent company is set to open its first stateside village in New York in September.
Luxury giants have been placing billion-dollar bets on in-person shopping in recent years.
Kering, which owns Gucci and Saint Laurent, recently spent $1.4 billion on a building in Milan's iconic shopping street, via Montenapoleone. It also spent nearly $1 billion on property acquisition on New York's Fifth Avenue.
LVMH has been doing the same. It's been taking over blocks of buildings to turn into retail cities.
This can also be seen with the acquisition of a stake in Bicester Village's parent company by LVMH-backed L Catterton.
Selling at a discount can ruin the feeling of exclusivity and scarcity for luxury brands.
"Luxury is very complicated because you're selling very overpriced product and you need to justify why," Javier Gonzalez Lastra, investment partner and portfolio manager at Tema, told BI.
He explained that when luxury retailers end up with excess products that they need to shift, they're often keen to do this in a way that maintains the feeling of scarcity and exclusivity, for example, by not heavily advertising these discounts.
But by keeping hidden away in a pristine manufactured village, these brands avoid falling into that trap and still keep an air of luxury.
"It's become a business in itself," Lastra said of discounted luxury, "if you fall into the trap of your profitability becoming highly dependent on it, you've got an issue."
To manage this issue, brands can't become too dependent on it as a main part of their business model, he explained.
And keeping these discounts hidden away in premium villages can be a way to manage this trade-off between luxury and discounting.
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