It is not easy to become a marketplace that sells beauty products. You need to stand out from your competitors and offer a different experience from what consumers get in retail. And yet, it is not impossible. Indeed, Philippe Berlan, Deputy Director-General of La Redoute, came to the E-Beauty conference held by JDN on June 7, 2018, in Paris, to tell how he initiated the brand’s digital transition and turned it into a marketplace.
Philippe Berlan joined La Redoute six years ago. He explained that the company is not a ’brand digital native”. Everyone recalls the paper catalogues, the flagship symbol of the mail-order house. However, if this model did work for some time, it needed to be renewed. ‘Our company was considered dead. It has completely changed since then. It was absolutely necessary to get digital,’ he said.
Philippe Berlan wanted to be reassuring: the transition at La Redoute did not affect his main ambition to build relationships with customers. Quite the contrary: ‘digital technologies offer endless personalization opportunities to better reach our consumers,’ he declared.
Facts and figures
As Philippe Berlan explained, the company experienced hardship, but managed to bounce back. Today, La Redoute is:
• 9 million unique visitors a month
• 30% of the turnover achieved on the global level, thanks to a presence in 26 countries
• 10 million customers, including 90% of women
• 99% fame among the 18-65 age group
• 91% of the turnover achieved thanks to online sales
If this data sound excellent, Philippe Berlan remains cool-headed. ‘We have become a pure player, but we do not pretend we are done with all this work. …
