To curb the cost of international expansion, Vente-Privée is cooperating with American Express on a 50:50 joint venture. The combined effort is due to go online in the US at the end of 2011. A name for the joint venture is yet to be decided.
Business Insider published a summary of an interview they had with Vente-Privée founder Jacques-Antoine Granjon where he discussed the planned US start.
In the interview, when asked about his competitors, Granjon remarked:
"Everyone is rushing into this. All they can think of is deals.
I don't think that's what works. What works is offering something really special, and doing it over the long term.
Of course, if you offer something for really cheap, people will visit. But how long is that going to last?
As for Amazon, flash sales aren't their job. Flash sales are about doing events for businesses. Flash sales happen because a brand has a problem, so you do an operation to solve that problem. It's a completely different business.
And when Gilt says they're going to open new verticals, and open full-price e-commerce sites, they're becoming just another e-commerce company.
No, we're about something else. We're about doing something special.
What we want is for something to happen every day that's so special that people come. And with those daily events, we create an addiction.
We don't do e-commerce, we do events."
It seems that despite the large number of players now operating private sales clubs, there is still scant understanding that the live shopping concept is more than just offering deals for bargain hunters.
Exciting Commerce has been preaching this way of thinking for years and in particular at the Live Shopping Days conferences.
Further activities revealed by Jacques-Antoine Granjon in the interview with Business Insider:
"We recently bought a company in Northern Europe to improve our inventory. We're starting a joint venture to sell last minute event tickets. There's tons of stuff."
Vente-Privée will be represented next October at the K5 Conference in Munich.
Related posts:
- Vente-Privée Grows 15% in 2010 to About 780 Million Euro
- Vente-Privée Targeting the USA
- Live Shopping Now A Tech Megatrend in Silicon Valley
Originally posted in German as two articles (1, 2) by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
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