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Why did you decide to bring your private online sales formula to Spain?

Showroomprive provides its members, who must register with the site to make purchases, with a full portfolio of top international fashion, accessories, decoration and cosmetics brands. Through Showroomprive, these brands present collections which, because of the speed at which they rotate in physical stores today, have not been fully sold (brands often have unsold structural stock of between 5% and 10% each year). We are a unique showcase that presents these collections strategically in a premium brand environment, respecting each brand's values and image. Right now Showroomprive is one of the leading e-commerce companies in Europe. We chose Spain to launch in 2010, four years after starting up in France because the country had a number of key features, such as good Internet penetration, consumers who love of fashion brands, a large population, among others.

 

What does Showroomprive's presence represent in terms of investment and jobs?
About 50 Spanish professionals work in our Madrid, Barcelona and in Paris offices. Our Madrid headquarters opened in 2012. All our external communication activities for the Mediterranean countries (Spain, Portugal and Italy) are centralized there. The Barcelona office brings together sales and production teams. It opened a year and a half ago so we could be physically closer to the brands and better meet their needs and offer them the opportunity to control most of the creative process by installing photographic studios and a production team.

 

What role does Spain play in the group now?
Spain is a key country in Showroomprive's strategy; in fact, 48.6% of the company turnover outside France is from Spain. Moreover, this market fits perfectly with the current "mobility" e-commerce trend. Spain has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in Europe. This coincides with the buying habits of our partners: 45% of purchases and 50% of visits to Showroomprive are made from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

 

What are the most recent major investments?
Innovation is one of the foundations of Showroomprive's growth, together with international development and the strategic product and brand proposals revolving around fashion and women. To retain our position as leaders in innovation, we will continue investing in this field, as we have done by developing new, more customized and secure applications that anticipate customer expectations and provide a shopping experience tailored to their particular tastes. We have also developed a new, revolutionary application that enables traffic to be redirected to the off-line boutiques and shops and combines expectation, exclusivity and cashback incentives.

 

In 2014 profits in Spain grew by 28%. Was that in line with your expectations? How do you expect to grow?
The company billed 480 million euros from its activities in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. We invoice 35 million euros in the Spanish market, 7.3% of total turnover and 48.6% of sales outside of France as I have already mentioned. We have managed to increase our global sales by 40% and reach 480 million euros in 2014, thanks to expanding markets like the Spanish market, which has grown by 28% over the past year. These are excellent numbers that meet the expectations we had set. In Spain, moreover, we have exceeded 2.8 million registered users and closed the year with more than 25 million hits and 360,000 orders, so we're very pleased.

We have obtained a set of awards that acknowledge this profitable growth, because for the ninth consecutive year we ended the year with a surplus, that is, we are a profitable company. We have met the billing objectives that we set a year ago and we have maintained the company's profitability. We are satisfied. We also have the confidence of over 1,500 partner brands and 20 million European consumers have decided to register on our site. In 2015 we will keep up our catalog strategy focused on fashion and women – Fashion accounts for 70% of our sales–, Innovation – to offer new services and increasing customization – and, finally, international development now represents 15% of turnover. We also propose opening in other countries.