How Ssense Is Celebrating Its 20th Anniversary
With a party in Paris, upcoming product drops, collaborations and activations, Ssense is celebrating its 20th anniversary in grand style, online and offline.
The monthlong campaign, themed Ssense XX, spotlights many brand and designer partners and kicked off with a dinner party Sunday during Paris Fashion Week, hosted by Rami Atallah, cofounder and chief executive officer of Ssense. Guests roamed the Musée des Archives Nationales, gobsmacked by the scale of the site and the Rococo salon where two long black tables and black foam cubes for seating were set included Rick Owens, Simone Rocha, Guram Gvasalia and Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez.
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Ssense will unleash 20 exclusive limited-edition product drops by emerging and established designer brands such as 032C, Acne, Amiri, The Elder Statesmen, ERL, Curves by Sean Brown, Jil Sander, Lu’u Dan, Marine Serre, Niko June, Martine Rose, Wales Bonner, The North Face and others. Each drop will live on a centralized microsite at ssense.com and launch a weekday at a time between Oct. 11 to Nov. 7. Co-created digital content pieces will support the merchandise storytelling. Online, a series dubbed “Ssense Friends” will feature the brand’s partners and collaborators photographed in recognizable Ssense e-commerce imagery, the company indicated.
There will also be in house-designed Ssense XX merchandise produced in limited quantities and available for purchase at ssense.com and on the Ssense app. The Ssense XX T-shirts, hoodies and hats have been designed to complement products created by Ssense’s brand and designer partners.
“One thing that has remained consistent over the 20 years is our commitment to being the home for new and emerging talent, across fashion designers, musicians — creatives of all forms,” said Daniel Habashi, chief customer officer of Ssense, who detailed for WWD all the elements of the 20th anniversary campaign. “Ssense has continued to be the voice for emerging and rising talent,” such as Knwls, Chopova Lowena, Olly Shinder Aaron Esh, All-in, Fidan Novruzova, Lu’u Dan, Collina Strada and Niko June.
Central to the celebration, according to Habashi, are the 20 product drops and initiatives that spotlight those “who played a formative role in the Ssense brand story.”
There will also be a physical manifestation, Oct. 11 to 25, of the digital anniversary campaign featuring a guerilla-style activation at Ssense Montreal, the brand’s five-story, 13,000-square-foot flagship store at 418 Rue Saint Sulpice, in Montreal’s Old Port. The entire facade will be wrapped in canvas that will serve as a screen for projected content.
The multilevel flagship is Ssense’s only store. It was designed by British architect David Chipperfield with a unique appointment-based model involving shoppers pre-selecting merchandise online, which quickly gathered and made ready for customers in the store’s personal shopping suites. A significant part of the store’s business is by appointment, though it’s possible to purchase off the shelves and racks in the store.
Asked what the next 20 years will bring to Ssense, Habashi answered, “We are always looking at ways to evolve and find the best ways to bring what’s next in design, luxury and creativity broadly speaking, to our consumers wherever they may be. Our consumer tends to be first and early to market. The great majority of our audience is between 18 and 40.”
Ssense is coming off an extended period of initiatives and innovation. An AI-powered personal styling chatbot, and a bridal collection were recently launched. Two and a half years ago, Ssense moved beyond fashion with the launch of “Everything Else,” an expanded product offering for home goods, kitchen products, technology and pet products among other categories. Unlike other websites with marketplace business models that list a vast array of products and categories without owning any of it, Ssense buys all the products it sells. “With Everything Else, we’ll continue to expand with new categories,” Habashi said.
“We have a desire to push the conversation forward. We buy globally, we sell globally.” He said the privately held, Montreal-based Ssense “prides itself on being forward-thinking and featuring emerging talent, and not just emerging fashion designers. We take risks. Our core focus is on leading on what’s ahead.…We are always looking to collaborate with brands that have a unique point of view. We want to continue to be the platform where conversations happen and connections happen. It’s about what’s happening next. We amplify the voices of those changing the way we see the world.”
He said Ssense strives to be “the epicenter where fashion intersects with design, community, technology and culture, and continue to be a global technology platform. Our progressive spirit runs throughout our DNA. It’s quite a full plate. We like being busy.”
With only the one store, there’s an opportunity for Ssense to evolve into more of an omnichannel business, as many other websites have done.
“It’s a very fair point,” Habashi acknowledged, when asked if stores could be part of Ssense’s future.
“You will start seeing Ssense show up physically in different ways in our future that we have not done before and there will be more of we are used to doing. We know the value of physicality and the different dimension of how you show up physically. Stay tuned. More to come on that,” Habashi said.
“Although we are digitally born, and that’s our core, we won’t lose sight of the power of physical.”
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