Livy to expand internationally one year after launch

By

Anaïs Lerévérend

Translated by
Isabelle Crossley

Published
Sep 10, 2018

The brand had an ambitious to-do list for its first year and, having completed it, is starting its second with news of international expansion. The lingerie brand, launched by Lisa Chavy, the Creative Director of Undiz and the Etam and Vog groups, is now set on becoming a global brand. Just after celebrating its first birthday on August 31, the brand has a number of launches coming up.

The brand retails bridge-to-luxury lingerie, as well as luxury lingerie, with some of its more elaborate pieces and set up shop in Selfridges, London, at the beginning of September. The British department store has taken Livy in as a permanent retailer and celebrated this by launching a pop-up store for the brand that will continue through the month.

For the autumn/winter season, the brand will also open in three Neiman Marcus stores in America, in Dallas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, just months after opening at Bergdorf Goodman in New York.

The brand will also open at another location in the big apple with a store at Journelle this September, a multi-brand designer lingerie boutique.

Chavy, the brand’s co-founder and creative director, explained that the brand was closing a circle with the launches in these big cities because the brand’s collections are inspired by the customer attitudes of the triptych of Paris, Los Angeles, and New York.

As well as the brand’s brick and mortar expansion, Livy has launched a new international interface for its website. The new site, launched on September 2, the site supports multiple currencies and has a range of delivery options to help the brand to boost its online sales.

“Online took off right away and took off well so it has become a more central part of the business plan after the first year of experience. Today, we have raised our online sales target to 50 percent [of total sales],” said Chavy.

“We are on track to meet our targets, even if we have fallen a little behind in the French retail sector. Preparation for international expansion took a lot of our time because opportunities came sooner than expected and we had to make development choices,” explained Chavy, who declined to report the brand’s first year revenue total.

In France, the brand already has three stores in Paris, Annecy, and Lille, as well as five outlets in department stores. Livy will expand more in France in the coming months.

“For the French market, we need more points of sale, as opposed to international markets where we have expanded online and in the most beautiful department stores first,” said Chavy.

The brand will retail from the last Parisian department store remaining on its list, Printemps Haussmann, from October 30 and is also looking for three more shops in the capital. The brand hopes to open these by the beginning of 2019. Lyon is also a target city for this winter.

For the next season, spring/summer 2019, the brand will also expand in France, this time in the south around the seaside resort of Livy, from which the brand takes its name. Chavy has spoken about opening in Cannes and Saint-Tropez as well as in luxury hotels in the region.

The brand currently has a team of 15 working at its headquarters, without counting the teams at points of sale, and Chavy’s brand will now begin a new chapter with the challenge of consolidating the organisation.

“We wanted to be big as soon as possible so we acted fast and did all of our business at once. Now we have to capitalise on the foundations we laid during this first year,” said Chavy. This is also the case for marketing.

Following a successful debut on social media thanks to the brand’s professional image, Livy must now convert its new subscribers and followers into customers and retain them. In order to achieve this, the brand will continue to invest in marketing and has an event planned for September 21 and 22 in Paris.

The mysterious “Livy House” will aim to attract both the press and customers. This initiative may also be later taken to London, now that the brand has begun its international expansion proper.