Listen to the audio version of the article
«Ours is a B2B business model: we focus first on our customers, who are the brands, and then on the final consumers. And I think that 2023, a very complicated year on a general level, has brought this role of ours back to the center: helping brands to dispose of their warehouses and carry out promotions, also attract traffic to their sites, and in some cases increase their notoriety”. 23 years have passed since Jacques-Antoine Granjon gave life to what at the time was, by his own definition, “a totally pioneering enterprise: there were only a few people doing e-commerce, all of them just starting out” and today it is a group that in 2023 recorded revenues of 3.2 billion euros, up 7% compared to 2022 with a peak of +11% across the border (i.e. outside France), and 80 million products sold.
Flash sales after Covid between brands and consumers’ needs
The group in question is Veepee, over 4,000 employees, born in 2019 from the evolution of the vente-privèe flash sale (timed offers) platform and today also active in the marketplace (with BrandsPlace), travel and communication channels. An important evolution that went hand in hand with a series of equally decisive changes that occurred at both a technological and social level: «Only after Covid, when there was a real boom in online sales, did it become clear what it meant to do e-commerce and also that the distance between a consumer and an online sales site is the same for everyone: one click”. Hence the need to have a strong identity: «We, as I was saying, help brands to free up their warehouses and they really need it at the moment: I have been hearing companies talk about reducing stocks for forty years, but in fact they continue to grow.” Selling branded products at discounted prices is «always a resilient business model, even in times of crisis, therefore with long-term potential. But we do not apply discounts to goods that are on sale at full price elsewhere, for example, nor do we sell them ourselves. My idea is that the channels shouldn’t be confused too much and brands should keep this in mind”, continues Granjon.
Business diversification with the marketplace
Currently Veepee, which has its core business in flash sales with 2.5 billion in revenues in 2023, collaborates with around 7,000 brands, 900 of which are Italian: «We were born as a platform dedicated to fashion and we continue to be so. Over time we have expanded the brand mix both to different categories of fashion brands and to brands from other sectors such as home or electronics. A mix based on creativity and an algorithm that personalizes what each individual consumer sees in the app depending on their interests. It’s not simple, it’s a question of creativity and balance.” The expectations for 2024 are clear: «For now we are focused on flash sales – he continues –, from which we expect organic growth, while we expect the marketplace to grow by double digits in the coming years. In general we are working on the reorganization of a group that has grown quickly and is now also developing different businesses.” BrandsPlace, launched four years ago in France and followed by Spain, Italy and Belgium, leaves full control of shop windows and promotions to partner brands and in 2023 recorded an increase in revenues of 48% with a peak of +85% in the Fashion & Lifestyle category .
The high potential Italian market
Italy is one of the main markets of the French group – in 2023 it was, together with Spain, among those that performed best, with an increase in group sales of 8% – and for Granjon «the growth trend is very positive, we don’t feel the impact of the decline in purchasing power.” In detail: flash sales rose by 6% while those of BrandsPlace recorded a +28% and the first three categories of products purchased by growth rate were Sports (+25%), Kids (+19%), Fashion (+12%). In our country the group has maintained two flash sales brands: Veepee and Privalia, a Spanish platform very active in Italy and Latin America that the then vente-privee took over in April 2016.