Poppy of Instagrameuses, Balzac brand opens its first shop in Paris

Founded in 2014, the female fashion site recorded growth of 30 % in 2022.

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Instagram and its 2 billion users are no longer enough in Balzac Paris. The female fashion brand founded in 2014 inaugurated, Wednesday, September 7, a first store in its brand, rue d’Hauteville in 10 e arrondissement of Paris. The idea of ​​exploiting a shop “trotted for a long time” in the head of the founders, Chrysoline de Gastines, her husband, Victorien, and her brother-in-law Charles Fourmaux. Because, explains the thirty -something entrepreneur, “a large part of the customers wants to touch the clothes and try them” before buying.

And this web child must now face lively competition on social networks to promote his limited editions, his leopard prints and his handbag, the César, the best of his sales. On Instagram, on which 445,000 subscribers follow his account, “the algorithm is increasingly ferocious”, explains M ^me of Gastines. Among its 70 employees, the 15 assigned to advertising on social networks must now “play elbows” so that the publications have the best return on investment possible and have fans buy on-the-champ.

To believe it, the operation of this 400 m² shop must contribute to the brand’s rise in France and abroad. The manager did not skimp on the decor, which cost more than a million euros. Balzac also plans to open shops in Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux and London. Rue d’Hauteville, where the shop received the visit of 2,500 people in two days of time, Charles Fourmaux Table on “3 to 4 million euros” in turnover.

Balzac is not the only brand born on the net to cross the Rubicon. For several years, Sezane, another figure of e-commerce with dazzling success, opens “apartments” or “conciergeries”, understand stores. The brand, whose sales jumped 30 %, to 250 million euros in 2021, should benefit from new liquidity to open more points of sale – it operates a dozen units to date, in Paris, Lille, New York, London and Madrid among others. Because, Morgane Sézalory, the 34-year-old founder, announced the 1 September, the entry to her capital of Tethys Invest, holding company of the very wealthy Bettencourt-Meyers family, shareholder of the group L ‘Oréal, alongside the American Fund General Atlantic, shareholder since 2018.

“Because profitable since its beginnings”, Balzac Paris “does not envisage this type of operation” in order to “remain a family company”, specifies Charles Fourmaux. The company is a minority shareholder Generis Capital Partners, a background specializing in SMEs. Its activity reached 19 million euros in 2021, after a jump of 50 %. Exercise 2022 is expected to grow by 30 %. A performance that a lot of its competitors abused by the trade crisis dream.