Vente du Diable: The French Deep Discounter for Refurbished Consumer Electronics

Due to market typical narrow margins, consumer electronics are only in special cases interesting for private shopping clubs.  Vente du Diable has a unique approach to sell refurbished goods as described by La-Vente-Privée.fr (FR/EN) :

“Vente du Diable sells end-of-stock brand name high tech products at 30 – 70% of original price! ... The  products come directly from the manufacturer through an exclusive distribution channel.”

The shopping club was launched in 2006 by e-commerce firm Ckado from Toulouse.  Ckado already has an online shop for clearance goods in operation.  In comments to Journal du Net, founder Stéphane Contrepois describes the background (FR/EN):

“The lifespan of high tech products in the catalogue of a manufacturer is between 4 to 5 months.  But when a product line matures, the manufacturer waits 3 to 6 months for the wholesalers and distributers to destock the merchandise.”

Vente du Diable enables manufacturers to clear out old merchandise up to 6 months earlier than the current sales process.  Returned merchandise on the other hand, continues to be cleared out by Ckado.

Four months after launch, Vente du Diable booked more than 57,000 registered members, in the meantime it counts more than 200.000 members.  The shopping club scores as the best niche market closed membership shopping service in France.  Further expansion within Europe is planned.

To differentiate themselves, the shopping club set up its own community (case study-PDF).  Ckado, financed with 1.2 million Euros, organized a sales promotion last November in Second Life.

Originally posted in German by Stephan Randler, translated by Jason Soo.