Hi everyone, sharing the experience I had today at the stand alone boutique in Amsterdam, long story short:
I had to cue for around 30 min, which I thought "it was ok" even under a light rain, because I saw the bag I was looking for inside the boutique (they had 2 from the exact same model/color/size).
From time to time an sa was going outside with a tablet to ask everyone that was in line for their first and last name, and which country they were from. I thought it was weird because I never saw this happening, but I answered.
When I was inside the boutique everyone else was a turist/not local client, like myself, and coincidence or not, not the standard client profile that the brand has as an ideal. No one was able to purchase anything, the sa´s were telling all of us that ALL the bags on display inside the store (including on the visible shelfs) were not available to purchase. I know that products on the window and manequins can´t be purchased, but the ones on the shelfs display? Never heard of that, someone already heard that?
I heard the other customers asking for shoes, all types of bag, small leather goods, and the answer was always that they don´t have it. Summing up, nothing that we could or couldn´t see was available for us to purchase. A group of customers had the same mother language than mine, so I understood when they were talking among themselves and saying that they knew this was BS, that they already bought bags from the brand recently and could tell this was not the usual.
When the sa told me nothing was available to purchase, but that I could try it on, I asked them so what was available to purchase, that it must have something on the store (it´s not a museum, right?). He asked me what and from which collection I was looking for.
At that point it was more than clear from me what was happening, I never had this treatment on my local boutique or even in the boutiques in Paris, I was in shock and didn´t answered. Then they started to walk towards one of these closets they have on the boutiques and opened the door, but I couldn´t see much of the bags because they were on the dust bags, only the edges.
So I saw and asked for a 19 and they also took another model that I didn´t recognize, both were from very old collections and not the style I was looking for, so I left the boutique.
Also coincidence or not, while waiting to enter the boutique two clients that had the profile that the brand aims for left the boutique with shopping bags, so they managed to find something that was available to purchase.
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