Upcycling Solution is the name of the new initiative launched by Veepee, an international player in private sales with 66 million members in 10 countries around the world, in collaboration with the French artist Maroussia Rebecq. It is a laboratory in which the unsold garments of Veepee’s partners will be rethought becoming new products – limited editions or unique pieces – to be placed on the market, in line with the increasing attention that the French company is giving to sustainability issues. .
“The US laboratory represents a further step in our approach to second hand and stock management of our brand partners, with further depth and commitment”, explains Jacques-Antoine Granjon, CEO and founder of Veepee. “We are moving towards services where we are less dependent on brand stock, as there are millions of unused items in our members’ closets. The US team will draw on the unsold products of Veepee’s partner brands or on the garments collected by its customers through Re-cycle, to design new, surprising items, in limited series, or even one-off pieces ».
Two years ago Veepee had already taken an important step forward on sustainability issues by launching the Re-turn and Re-cycle services: the first allows customers to return the items purchased on the platform with the aim of offering them a second life; the second to send brand new or used products directly from their closets, in exchange for a discount coupon offered by the brand. “In 2021 we carried out about thirty operations with brands like Aigle,” explains Granjon. He announces that he also wants to accelerate the development of Re-Cycle, a service to which 2,500 square meters and 25 employees are dedicated today and which the founder of Veepee defines as “a real industrial challenge”.
From second hand to upcycling, therefore, the step was natural. The US project – to which a 700 square meter laboratory is dedicated in the Veepee factory in La Plaine St Denis – will initially be active in France, but the company’s ambition is “to gradually implement US in Europe, presenting products during events or sales. venues organized on our Veepee site. Volumes will depend on the creativity and execution of the Maroussia Rebecq teams. For her and her team of 8, it is a question of being able to produce thousands of pieces: Veepee’s reserves of raw materials are significant ”, explains the founder.
During 2021, Veepee recovered its pre-pandemic turnover levels, selling 105 million products and reaching a total turnover (GMV) of 3.2 billion euros: “We reached almost 400 million euros in turnover in 2019 . We went to zero during the lockdown in 2020. Two years later, we returned to the 2019 data ». Now the challenge is to become less dependent on stocks: «This is the heart of our strategy: to continue to provide this qualitative stock management service and to develop in parallel, thanks to our traffic, activities that are not dependent on them».