Since @HarrodsofLondon’s most impressive arrival on Twitter; the iconic store has cleverly managed to capture and captivate us with friendly ease delivering the most vibrant, engaging and informative tweets, and by doing so, has quickly and firmly embedded itself über-positively in the public’s collective conscience (or at least those with a Twitter account) as well as reaffirmed itself as one of London’s greatest luxury brands. Social media team. If you haven’t got one, it might be time!
So, here we have one of London’s oldest darlings showing us the way forward. The fusion of heritage with cutting edge, of old and new. Harrods have simply capitalised on their unique brand value, wiping the floor with the clever use of social media and last week, timed to perfection, the luxury store became the first retailer to launch a GPS-assisted interactive iPhone app.
Once you’ve downloaded, you’ll agree, top marks. Not only is it informative and tech-y, coming right to the point with the usual stuff (Store Information, all the latest Harrods News, live Twitter feed, and a very welcome and interesting introduction to where it all began), it actually makes you believe you’re there, right there inside. Quite a nice feeling for all those overseas customers. However if you are less virtual and more in-store, then you’ll soon realise the true value of the App as the GPS identifies your location and swiftly navigates you from the Ground Floor Food Halls by let’s say the Caviar House Seafood Bar, towards Charbonnel et Walker over to Acqua di Parma and straight up to the First Floor where you’ll be floating through Alexander Wang before hitting Celine and YSL. Or any other route you may find more to your taste – in fact it lets you plot whichever route you please.
If you’re slightly familiar with Harrods and if like many of us (unlike those lucky enough to call it their corner shop) you don’t manage a daily visit and therefore can’t for the life of you remember whether Etro bed linen is in the vicinity of Bill Amberg luggage, then the Harrods App is pretty indispensable. In fact once you start using it, you almost wonder how on earth you coped with finding your way round the one-million-square-foot shopping empire pre-app.
Apart from its clear functionality, the app also allows us a charming peek behind the scenes, giving us a decade by decade account of the store’s fascinating history from its early beginnings in the 1830’s (Who Was Mr Harrod?) right up to the 1990’s (Egypt Re-discovered).
Can’t wait to see what the upgrade has up its sleeve!
The app is free and can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store, it’s compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch – from summer also on Android phones.
The Harrods App is over 20MB in size and requires WiFi access in order to download it.
