Vente-privee.com

Vente-privee.com Refashions Closeouts

Created in 2001, Vente-privee.com is a branch of Oredis, which is a wholesaler of closeouts.

Vente-privees.com is a private club on line which organizes exclusively for its members occasional sales of top brand products with discounts up to 70%.

To join this private club, existing members must sponsor new ones. Two days before a sale, each member receives an invitation by email to subscribe to the sale. These sales start at 7h a.m and last for two or three days. They buy on line by paying with credit card and then received the order by post. The member has seven days to return it, if he is not satisfied.

These sales are the results of partnership of luxury brands, like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Swatch, Givenchy, etc. and vente-privee.com. These brands give their closeout inventory to vente-privee.com to be sold on line and the latter retains a commission per item sold.

The items for sale include luxury apparel and accessories, wine and champagne, household liners, small household appliances and baby clothes.

With a staff of 750 employees, Vente-privee.com is located in the Parisian suburb of La Plaine Saint Denis. The private club has today about 4.5 millions members.

According to an article of ComScore, vente-privee.com has been the second website visited by the French, with 1,225,000 and 1,937,000 visitors in August and September 2007 respectively.

Vente-privee.com is a very successful business model, which started as a leader in France, with 95% market shares and is already present on the German and Spanish market since September 2006. The company is planning to add the Italian, British, and in two years, the American markets.

Recently, Vente-privee.com has handed over 20% of its capital to the American Company Summit Partners. According to the CEO of vente-privées.com, Jacques-Antoine Granjon, the goal of this operation is to accelerate their industrial and commercial development on the American market.

The company is working with more than 600 famous brands, which prefer to deal with their innovative concept, which protects their brand image and brings in new customers.

The success of the business model is due to the fact that vente-privee.com does not buy any overstock, but only acts as a “middleman” between the luxury brands and the members.

In 2006, the company’s turnover and profit has reached 240 millions Euros and 50 millions Euros respectively and in 2007, the turnover was of 360 millions Euros.

The model is today copied all over world. In France, the company has about 70 competitors offering discount and closeout items on line and the main ones are 24h00, Bazarchic and AchatVIP. Its main British competitor is buyvip.com.

The CEO, Jacques-Antoine Granjon does not seem to be worried about these copycats as he knows well that the company has strong relationship with the brands. Moreover it is the first company to use such concepts, as flash sales, discounted high brand products and at the same time protecting their brand image.

It is a sustainable model as the company provides their consumers with high discounted products of their favourite brands, prices which are impossible to find in their shops and also because overstock is unavoidable.

Though the model has some disadvantages; there is a telephone number with a premium rate on the website and thus paying more to ask questions. It is difficult to return a product when unsatisfied, as the member has to send a mail, and then will receive a mail with a return number, which he adds on his returned order. Some people rather doubt using their credit card on line, they will prefer using cheques.

Sources:
http://www.vente-privee.com/vp3/aboutUs.aspx
http://www.journaldunet.com/recherche/?f_recherche=vente-privee.com&f_niveau_filiation=1
http://www.vnunet.fr/fr/news/2007/06/11/summit-partners-un-membre-vip
http://search.businessweek.com/Search?searchTerm=vente-privee.com&resultsPerPage=20