How DHL helped a long-established French fashion and home brand win at cross-border e-commerce

Before we find out about La Redoute’s partnership with DHL, let’s discover a bit more about the company itself.

In the fastmoving world of fashion, trends come and go, but La Redoute is a longstanding, quintessential French fashion and home brand named after a street in Roubaix in 1837. International Development Director, Vanessa Pageot, explains what gives La Redoute its unique ‘je ne sais quoi’.

Before we talk international expansion and how the business is booming today, let’s rewind matters and catwalk back to where the company was in the 1980s and 90s. The fashion landscape looked very different then, and we’re not just talking about the big shoulder pads and bright neon colours. These were the days before digital. La Redoute was an established company and a French icon for taste and quality.

The transition to a fully-fledged multi-channel business hasn’t been without its ups and downs, but today La Redoute’s fortunes are in the ascendent. What does La Redoute look like as a brand in 2023 you ask? Vanessa tells us.

“We have three brands: 2 Home brands with our main brand La Redoute Interiors, and our premium brand AM.PM, with more exclusive designs and conception. Our 3rd brand is La Redoute Collection, a fashion brand for women, men and kids.”

With three brands to operate, this is a business with several plates to spin and many products to produce and promote. So, what keeps customers coming back for more? The brand’s best sellers are furniture and home linen products, mainly because of La Redoute’s competitive edge in terms of design.

While customers used to walk in off the streets in the 80s and 90s, today La Redoute must be smart and innovative about how it sells online. To do this, they first had to understand their customer and find out their online shopping habits.

So, who is the La Redoute customer who loves to shop French design? Well, customers are mainly mothers aged between 35 and 45 years old. They’re active, live in large towns and cities and do most of their shopping online, chiefly to save time. No wonder the breadth of La Redoute’s digital offering hits home.

If that’s what the typical La Redoute shopper looks like, the next question is how to target them? And targeting customers is a bit like selling clothes. One size doesn’t fit all. Apolline Bouchez, Operations Manager, explains more.

“The main markets we operate in our International Development team are Germany and Austria, amongst the 172 countries managed by our team. We work with big SEA players and digital marketing agencies to generate traffic – we also have a strong SEO department at the group level, and CRM assets to boost organic.”

As La Redoute’s Apolline Bouchez says, e-commerce expansion into different countries doesn’t happen by itself. La Redoute was faced with three main challenges.

Delivery, the first challenge, is especially important. This is what a customer remembers most, especially if the product comes broken or arrives late. A bad online experience isn’t something anyone wants to experience anytime soon. This is where DHL’s Parcel Connect delivery service proved to be the perfect fit for the fashion brand. Apolline tells us why:

“Through our websites www.laredoute.com and www.laredoute.de, we ship to 172 countries worldwide and to 14 countries in Europe with DHL's Parcel Connect delivery service. These 14 countries represent 90% of our turnover. Also, DHL is known for being reliable and efficient, so it helps to propose a carrier that everybody knows and doesn't have doubts about. When customers see big names like DHL on our websites they feel secure.”

La Redoute’s two other big challenges were language translation and overcoming certain customer habits. In Germany, La Redoute found customers were returning a lot. And we mean a lot! After researching German customer habits, they discovered 48% returns was pretty much the norm in women’s fashion.

Why? Customers there order two sizes to ensure they have the right one. Who knew? Well, now we all do.

La Redoute’s partnership with DHL eCommerce began in 2021 and has been growing ever since. So, why DHL's Parcel Connect service and what do they deliver (and we don’t just mean parcels)? Apolline explains further:

Since growing the business in Germany, La Redoute has launched their German website – www.laredoute.de in June 2023. Having a specific URL is a much better way to address a market but sales need to justify the investment. It's proving to be a win-win, because DHL eCommerce helped La Redoute to grow enough to justify a URL – and now they have a URL they're going to get even bigger and drive more volume for DHL eCommerce. Now that’s what you call a great parcel partnership.

And it’s not just in Germany where this French fashion success is looking to expand its e-commerce credentials. Italy is calling and not for the first time. La Redoute had a local office there previously, which had to close, but Vanessa spotted an opportunity to reopen its doors.

“We were selling mainly fashion back then, close to a decade ago. We reopened our local office in Milano in January 2023 with a business model strongly oriented toward with home goods. Totally different. Different market. Different products.”

Learning from the past is a great way to inform future decision-making. That’s something we can all probably learn from. The world of fashion and design is all about the next and the new. So, what does the future look like? What’s next for Vanessa and La Redoute’s International Development team?

*Interview conducted online in November 2023. DHL has been given permission to use the La Redoute images on this page until December 2026. DHL has been given permission to use the La Redoute images on this page until December 2026.