Two of France’s biggest success stories in recent years, Tatiana and Lara Rouyres, cofounders of Dealissime which sold to Living Social just one year into launch, have left their roles as French country managers of Living Social, and have announced their next startup: The Selectionnist.
Meant to bridge the gap between magazines like Elle, Vogue & brands like Kenzo & Paul&Joe, The Selectionnist, in its first iteration, allows women to find products that they’ve seen in magazines and buy them directly via The Selectionnist. Traditional print magazines – even fashion magazines – are seeing ad dollars disappear each year for print advertising; however, converting ad dollars to eCommerce dollars isn’t stupid. According to a study by The Selectionnist, 74% of Women who read magazines try to find products they see in Magazines.
The first version of the product, launching today, is quite simple: enter the product, the magazine and/or the brand, and The Selectionnist will pull up results from recent issues. For its launch, The Selectionnist has partnered with 16 publications, including Vogue, Elle, Glamour & Madame Figaro, and more than 1,000 new products added each week.
We are convinced that we need to bridge the gap between the curation by fashion media and online purchasing of products selected by media. In the short term, we are developing our application for mobile and we plan to quickly launch internationally in order for the whole world to be able to discover the selection from journalists around the world!” – Tatiana Jama, cofounder of The Selectionnist
In the media space, new players coming on to the fashion scene have also had a big advantage over traditional players, due to this very problem. MenSpace, founded by Marc Menasé, is a media built entirely for eCommerce, so much so that they have split out their media & eCommerce divisions, while remaining very much integrated on the web. By building a media with the express purpose of monetizing respected curation, new players are quickly catching up to their traditional counterparts, with established brands becoming more trusting of new media than old, as those brands look to improve their digital presence and ROI.
For The Selectionnist, the game will be to straddle the line between being a revenue source for Media outlets & monetizing their audience. While they haven’t mentioned how sales commissions are split between the magazine and The Selectionnist, I have to imagine they are favorable towards magazines, for the time being, as they look to build up momentum and brand loyalty.
For the French Tech ecosystem, this is great news – the two cofounders have ‘sat on the side lines’ for the past 3 years since their acquisition by Living Social, and I for one look forward to seeing what three years of time to reflect produces for them.
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