Posted Sep 13, 2022, 9:03 AM
She took the marketing model of “Tupperware” door-to-door sellers to the 21st century.e century. Isabelle Rabier leads Jolimoi, which has just been named Start-Up of the Year for the Ile-de-France region by EY, as part of the 30e edition of its Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Founded in 2016 in Paris, Jolimoi markets beauty products through a network of independent home and online salespeople. In concrete terms, in addition to the classic at-home social selling model, the “beauty stylists” (the name given to independent sellers in the Jolimoi network) also offer personalized buying advice online and via social networks.
A necessary multi-brand model
“It all started in 2009, when I founded my own brand of beauty products, Dermance, specializing in the mature skin segment. Convinced that social selling was the future of distribution, I bet on a network of independent door-to-door sellers, but adding this digital facet to it,” explains Isabelle Rabier.
But the model quickly reaches its limits, because with less than 15 products referenced by the brand, sellers struggle to retain and expand their customer base. At the same time, several brands of beauty products, interested in Dermance’s marketing model, contacted the entrepreneur to offer her a partnership, thanks to a listing in the catalog of her sellers.
This is how Isabelle Rabier founded her second company, Jolimoi, whose catalog already lists 60 brands and should expand further in the coming months. So that the 5,000 beauty stylists in the company’s network can find their way around, it has set up an algorithm, linked to a chatbot, which makes it possible to make an initial selection of products according to the affinities and physiological particularities of potential customers. .
Personalized advice
Based on this preselection, the beauty stylists then offer personalized advice, based on the training provided by Jolimoi and their own specialties. “Most of the members of our network have specific expertise: skin, hair, clean beauty… This is also what makes their added value”, assures the manager, who also insists on the importance of seller-customer trust: “Beauty stylists are remunerated by variable commission, but without an incentive operation to sell a particular product, so as not to bias the advice. »
This marketing model has proven itself, since Jolimoi achieved 4.4 million euros in turnover in 2021, against only 463,000 euros in 2019. To further accelerate its growth, the company has just raised 7 million euros in series A with, in particular, Seventur Partners and Showroomprivé. These funds should allow it to grow from 40 to 70 employees by the end of the year, to invest in data acquisition and improvement of the algorithm and to develop internationally.
Today mainly present in France, Jolimoi nevertheless achieves around 10% of its sales in Belgium. The short-term objective is to strengthen its position in this country, then to establish itself in several countries in southern Europe.
* The Entrepreneur of the Year award is organized by EY, in partnership with HSBC, Verlingue, Steelcase and Bpifrance.
Leave a Comment