The Invisible Collection is an e-commerce outlet selling bespoke pieces crafted by renowned interior designers – and well! – But it’s the way they sell their furniture online that sets them apart from the rest.
They have a very curated offering, bespoke sourcing services to industry and private clients and strong links with their artists and designers, acting as agents to organise pop ups and events worldwide, all the while creating strong and sustained visibility to all the talents they live to showcase.
We had a chat with Isabelle Dubern, the woman behind the work, about it all.
How do you explain the success of The Invisible Collection, pioneer on the e-commerce market of collectible furniture, after a year of existence?
Just like music and fashion, the furniture industry is a cultural business. With The Invisible Collection, culture is a prerequisite for the purchase of furniture pieces. If our customers did not have this cultural knowledge, they would not buy pieces at the prices we practice on the site.
The Internet has fundamentally changed the way culture is conveyed, music is the best example, and the same lessons apply to fashion, art and decoration.
Art has already largely begun this shift: one out of two clients that participate in auctions online at Christies is a new customer for the auction house.
Moreover, the furniture pieces of the interior designers we present are luxury products, both from the craftsmanship and the creativity that go into them.
According to Mac Kinsey, online luxury sales will triple in 10 years, making ecommerce the 3rd market after China and the US. And according to a study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, online luxury sales will increase by 25% per year in the next five years, compared with 5 to 6% for the luxury industry in general.
Why was The Invisible Collection launched in London when the majority of the designers you present are French?
The two founders Anna Zaoui and Isabelle Dubern have lived in London for respectively 20 and 4 years.
It is by being far from France that they understood the richness and the uniqueness of interior designers and architects’ work.
We are proud to have brought together the biggest names of interior design in just a few months and to participate every day in the exciting work of archiving and researching their past private projects to find what pieces to edit and sell online.
We convinced each of them to present their furniture and their work online; in this we were pioneers just like Net-A-Porter was when Nathalie Massenet had the visionary genius to convince, not without any diffculty, t he l uxury b rands to come on her website. The first to trust her was Christian Louboutin. He is the one to have encouraged all the others although the reluctance to expose their pieces outside their own shops or department stores was great in the luxury fashion industry at the time. At that period, luxury houses were very reluctant to showcasing their fashion shows online. Today, every single detail of their haute couture collections, behind the scenes and first rows are broadcasted live online and on social networks.
We will, in the same spirit, put forward each of these designers and the craftsmen they support.
The Invisible Collection is a start up created by a very feminine team, is this an asset in the world of design and luxury furniture?
Only 7% of tech start-up founders are women… We in fact started with the passion for furniture, art and architecture and then made sure the digital would follow…
We are also particularly attached to meeting and discussing with our customers without any time limits and with excellent standards of service; perhaps both are more feminine qualities?
Also, we are obsessed with attractive merchandising; beautiful pictures, well written texts…
Finally, it is undeniable that the atmosphere at the office on a daily basis and during our events is rather fun. Work hard, play hard on a very family mode.
See more about The Invisible Collection here.
