Oct 21, 2024
Fashiontech: Monnier Paris unveils its spin-off to help luxury brands take their digital transformation to the next level
EXCLUSIVE – Faced with the complexity of multichannel distribution, Diaa Elyaacoubi decided to design a back-office solution that allows brands to optimize all their distribution channels with complete control, from product listing to shipping. This solution is officially revealed today.
At first glance, Monnier Paris appears to be a simple online platform selling luxury accessories. But behind the scenes, it is a company that has fully embraced a technological destiny since Diaa Elyaacoubi took over the business just before the Covid-19 pandemic boosted global e-commerce.
Today, the entrepreneur, who ventured into business 25 years ago with a mobile virtual network operator later sold to Vivendi, unveils a secret project developed within Monnier Paris: GaiaSuite. This spin-off aims to offer luxury brands a comprehensive back-office solution. Its goal is to cover the entire multichannel distribution chain, from product listing to shipping.
A back-office for brands' multichannel distribution
For Diaa Elyaacoubi, this solution meets a critical need in the luxury sector. "It's a fascinating but very conservative and poorly equipped industry. As a result, there was an opportunity to add value and become a true technology partner for luxury players," she explains to Maddyness. She adds, "Monnier was a textbook example of a brand that didn’t grasp the importance of technology and tried to internalize it. The company attempted to use different types of technological blocks, but they weren’t well managed. Information was getting lost from one block to another. Additionally, the tech teams were unstable. In short, we had to change the engine mid-flight."
It was to give new life to Monnier Paris, a site founded by Guillaume and Jean Monnier in 2010 and later acquired by Belgian distributor Louis Delhaize in 2012, that the GaiaSuite solution was developed. "Monnier is our digital transformation analysis and lab. In this context, GaiaSuite is a tool supporting that transformation. In a way, we are the back-office for something like Shopify," summarizes Diaa Elyaacoubi.
"Audience gateways are being redistributed"
Now that the solution has proven itself internally, the entrepreneur wants to put it in the hands of all luxury brands that need to accelerate their digital transformation to stand out on marketplaces. GaiaSuite, which leverages artificial intelligence, aims to help them better manage their inventory and digitize their product catalog.
"We are experiencing a real omnichannel revolution. We are seeing increasingly important and varied channels, such as marketplaces, live shopping, or the metaverse. In this context, audience gateways are being redistributed. Managing sales and thus customer relations is becoming more and more complex," analyzes Diaa Elyaacoubi. Hence the importance of a solution like GaiaSuite to meet the challenges of this omnichannel revolution. And while the Monnier Paris CEO is surprised that France, "the leading country in luxury," does not yet have a "true digital player in luxury and fashiontech," she hopes to change that with her company and its newly unveiled spin-off, aiming to succeed where Farfetch has failed.
