Chinese women’s clothing retailer Milanoo is to open up an ‘O2O experience shop’ in France.

O2O shops refer to a new type of shopping experience store from online to offline. It provides offline exhibition and trial opportunities for goods previously only available online. Users can get information on goods online and experience using the product in actual stores.

With the increasingly fierce competition in the clothing industry and as well as problems of one-off online transactions, Milanoo decided to open up a new product experience store this year with France as a starting point.

Clients can set up a free try-on of clothing products on Milanoo’s website at the Paris experience store, so they can personally experience the quality, workmanship, as well as having the opportunity to try on different styles and sizes, making it easier to eventually choose the most suitable clothes on the website.

“From past experiences with online stores, we have noticed that our customers are overseas, and owing to the gaps in distance and culture, if we only display our products to the customer via pictures and text on the website, it would be difficult to exchange and communicate with the customer and understand their needs, and the cost of trust is very high,” Milanoo’s VP of operations Abby Lai.

“The opening of the O2O experience store has allowed our extremely competitive products to appear before the customers’ eyes, which is an even more direct and more favourable feeling than transmitting it through a screen.”