The Longchamp Success Story

As an independent luxury brand, Longchamp has a key mission - to provide the best customer experience and improve its performance management. Innovation  authenticity is key to Longchamp’s identity. Over the past few years, the brand has redesigned the customer experience inside its stores, including the provision of a seamless checkout experience. Longchamp teams chose Adyen and Global Blue to be a part of this journey.

Envisioning a Seamless Checkout for a Better Customer Experience

Longchamp is committed to delivering the best in store experience for both domestic and international shoppers. To make it as smooth and efficient as possible, the brand decided to introduce a seamless checkout experience. 

Understanding that international shoppers have different payment methods, varied or multiple digital wallets, and require Tax Free Shopping, Global Blue and Adyen support Longchamp by making the checkout faster and smoother for international shoppers. 

Envisioning a seamless checkout experience was the next step to offer a smooth and fast customer experience. We needed partners that understood our innovative needs and were already present in our boutiques. We have a long-term and solid relationship with Global Blue. They have always been responsive and proactive in helping us improve our Tax Free performance.

Benoit Schmid
Retail IT Manager, Longchamp

An Integrated Solution through a Unique Partnership with Adyen

As a long-term partner of Longchamp, Global Blue had already been supplying the brand with Tax Free Shopping solutions. Within this new partnership with Adyen, Longchamp benefits from a tokenization service for Tax Free Shopping where Adyen provides Global Blue with a token to refund shoppers. Thanks to the tokenization of the payment card details, Longchamp salespeople save time and reduce the risk of errors as they no longer need to walk away with the shopper’s card to capture card details. The safe and PCI-DSS compliant process also ensures the card details are secured from the first step of the Tax Free Shopping journey. 

The customer will then receive a refund for their purchase in under 48 hours on the same card. This means shoppers do not have to worry about queuing at the airport to collect their refund – it is all taken care of automatically. 

Shoppers are also encouraged to make additional purchases, resulting in increased cross-selling and upselling in Longchamp stores. Along with this, Longchamp visitors can benefit from the Global Blue Mobile Customer Care (MCC), a notification system that digitizes the Tax Free Form and supports shoppers at every step of the refund process. By guiding shoppers with important reminders at key stages of the journey, MCC ensures shoppers complete their refund, boosting the store’s refund ratio.

A relevant choice for Longchamp’s needs, Global Blue and Adyen's solutions provide unique data on the traffic of Longchamp’s Points of Sale (PoS) as well as analysis on the Tax Free performance of PoS, and international clientele profiles. 

We offer Longchamp a secure, digitalized process for Tax Free Shopping thanks to tokenization and fast refund. Longchamp customers are reimbursed almost immediately.

Gilbert Przyswa
Key Account Sales Director, Global Blue

Enrich Data Analysis: Strengthening the Issue Ratio

By choosing Adyen and Global Blue, Longchamp can better understand and meet the needs of its shoppers. As leaders in the field, both Global Blue and Adyen provide unique data on the traffic of Longchamp’s PoS (point of sales) as well as a post-analysis on the Tax Free performance, and international clientele profiles. Furthermore, Longchamp benefits from additional analysis thanks to the ability to cross-reference data from both Global Blue and Adyen. 

The issue ratio monitor is created by crossing eligible transactions to Tax Free and the number of Tax Free Forms issued, so Longchamp know whether eligible tourists have been taken care of by their teams. With the issue ratio, Longchamp can pinpoint missed Tax Free transactions in stores and provide targeted training to stores that need it. This helps to maximize the benefits of the scheme for both Longchamp and its shoppers.

Planning the Next Steps with Adyen

In the upcoming future, Global Blue, and Adyen plan on going a step further by introducing eligibility detection on payment cards. This feature will notify sales assistants that a Tax refund is possible at the time of payment by accessing the shopper’s payment card information. 

International cards from eligible countries will be automatically recognized, making it easier to inform shoppers who are not familiar with Tax Free Shopping, for example American citizens, about the service. Eligibility detection helps strengthen the issue ratio by making sure Longchamp does not miss out on any customers that could benefit from Tax Free Shopping. 

"We are completely satisfied. Without the integration between our partners Adyen and Global Blue, it would be difficult to personalize the checkout experience for customers eligible for Tax Free Shopping," concludes Benoît Schmid.

"Our partnership is not only technological but also human, with dedicated experts who are available and responsive. These specialists are also there to train our sales teams in payment and tax issues and support us if there is any incident with a client.”

Get what you need

Enter the Global Blue Universe