LE NEW BLACK: your brand is registered to the official calendar of Paris Men’s fashion week and you chose LE NEW BLACK to digitise your showroom, and offer a powerful commercial experience to your buyers. Can you tell us more about your current strategy as a brand facing the Covid-19 crisis? 

Louis-Gabriel Nouchi: The crisis forced us to rethink the value of our digital tools, such as the tools we are using for sales and communication, and that we so far used as a support of our commercial activity.

"Today a digital solution such as LE NEW BLACK is central, as most of the actors of the industry are not able to travel. It is crucial to integrate a tool able to show the garment but also the identity of the brand."

We want to be able to communicate the emotion of the garment through our pictures and video, we want them feel like touching the creations, and that is a true challenge! Our strategy is to work hard both on physical and digital, each one supporting the other. As a complement of our e-shop and of our BtoB on LE NEW BLACK, we just opened our first retail store LGN LOUIS GABRIEL NOUCHI Rue Oberkampf in the 11th arrondissement of Paris!

LNB: Our partner Grand Shooting produces your 360° videos and images to enrich the presentation of your collections in your digital showroom. How important do you think content production is within BtoB client relations? Are you developing a reflexion about new technology as a way to showcase your brand? 

LGN: Content production is now crucial for the BtoB commercial experience. 360° shooting allow a better understanding of the proportions, the position of the fabric, details in the back and by profile, that are often difficult to share with a traditional lookbook, or with catwalks. Virtual reality and augmented reality allow a deeper understanding but always have to evolve to be more than a gadget, and be user friendly for the brands and their clients.

LNB: According to you, what are the three innovating companies or people in the fashion industry that answer the major challenges our society go through (environment, society, economy etc.), and that you would advise the actors of the industry to follow carefully?

LGN: Without any hesitation I would say WOH, an Estonian company of furniture design for stores that we work with for our Parisian store. Their hangers are made of recycled PET! I also very much appreciate Sophie Rowley, and artist who works with a new material based on recycled denim that looks like marble. And tech finally: The Fabricant, a company offering digital prototyping!