VIP rooms provide a luxury escape for high-profile clients on the Strip
Secret shops give patrons privacy
Though we all put our pants on one leg at a time, a shopper inside the Stefano Ricci clothing store on the Strip may do so while surrounded by crocodile-skin chairs.
The chairs, worth about $100,000, are joined in the Ricci VIP room by jackets, silk ties, gold and diamond belt buckles and a crocodile-skin roll along suitcase — one of five in existence.
“It’s a good escape,” said Philip Wiseman, general manager for the Strip location inside the Shops at Crystals. “Everyone wants to experience a little luxury.”
The Ricci store is merely one on the Strip to offer VIP rooms for the privacy of high-profile shoppers. These shoppers, which include celebrities, business executives and foreign royalty, want to escape the public eye, make purchases in peace, and feel catered to all in one go.
While not all of Crystals’ 50-plus in-store brands feature VIP rooms, at least one of each type of store from jewelry to shoes to men’s to women’s has one, Crystals marketing director Monique Clements said.
Some of the rooms, such as the Ricci one, are easily spotted. Others are more hidden, accessible by knowledgeable staff or a repeat shopper.
Hand-picked decor
The decor inside each room may have been handpicked by the brand’s executive teams, Clements said. Some have their own small kitchens and private restrooms to cater to shoppers. Others that can hold about 20 people are used to host private events.
“Our guests might not be surprised by what’s offered inside these rooms, but the rooms help to meet the demands for our highest caliber of guest,” she said. “They expect a high level of service.”
The rooms also allow individual stores to work with a high-profile shopper while still keeping open the rest of the store, Clements said.
Some celebrity shoppers will request a store completely shut down to the public while the celebrity shops, she said. Sometimes that celebrity won’t make the purchase at that time, instead gathering ideas for themselves and their personal buyer. Last year, Dior Beauty added a VIP
SHOPPERS
O’shea said, “not just for food retail, but for retail in general.”
Groceries are already a fiercely competitive business, with low-cost rivals like Aldi putting pressure on traditional supermarket chains and another discounter, Lidl, opening its first U.S. stores this week. Whole Foods itself had launched an offshoot chain named after its “365” private label brand in a nod to the popularity of no-frills chains.
The Amazon-whole Foods combination could put even more pressure on those chains and other big grocery sellers. Walmart, which has the largest share of the U.S. food market, has been working on lowering prices, while Target has been struggling to turn around its grocery business.
“Dominant players like Walmart, Kroger, Costco and Target now have to look over their shoulders at the Amazon train coming down the tracks,” O’shea said.
Online delivery of groceries has been tough for any company to pull off because of customers’ concerns about the quality of meat and produce, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said. But if they know that what they are getting is the same as what they would get at the local store, they are more likely to try it out.
Pachter said that even if Amazon gets 20 million members of its Prime loyalty program to pay $15 a month extra for Amazonfresh grocery-delivery service, that’s 20 million not going to traditional supermarkets. He added that these are likely the higher-income households.
“The conventional grocery store should feel threatened and incapable of responding,” Pachter said.
John Mackey will stay as CEO of Whole Foods, and the headquarters will stay in Austin, Texas.