Today, let’s welcome on the Look Forward blog François Le Tanneur, founder and CEO of app’s miles®, who became an entrepreneur after +25 year experience in customer marketing, notably at the head of ecommerce division for Laser-Cofinoga but also in a startup called Snapp’, known to have launched the FIDME app.
He founded app’s miles® in 2014, a white-label software that allows companies to create loyalty programs that are multichannel, multi-actions, multi-customers.
Hello François! Let’s get to the point if you allow me: what is the concept of app’s miles®?
After working for a long time on loyalty in large companies and startups, I launched in 2014 with my associate Laurent Sebag. For us, being a customer is way more than simply purchase articles: This is what app’s mile® addresses, aiming to create animation or loyalty programs that deal with the whole customer / business relationship.
To investigate the customer relationship in its totality is being able not only to reward purchases, but also visits, moments of choice and hesitation, and every other action a consumer can have toward a brand: comments, shares, feedbacks on social media…
Following this, we are working on 3 main topics:
- DATA: push customers to give more info about their profiles,
- USES: allow brands to create contacts and work on loyalty and retention, in order to push traffic towards the products
- SOCIAL: reward every kind of cooperation, visibility, feedbacks coming from customers.
3 tpics that are at the core of every retailers challenges nowadays ! Who do you work with and which cooperation ?
We have already gained trust among 10 customers, including Leclerc, Celio, Citroën, Gifi… We have also been working with the Closer magazine for a long time. app’s miles® is integrated in their mobile app (iOs and Android) and allow them to duplicate both their visits and the number of page views per user, these two points being more than crucial in the digital press economy.
After being in Cofinoga for more than 15 years, wasn’t it too difficult to leave a stable personal, professional, family situation in order to launch your own business ?
It is extremely and challenging to work in a large company, if only for the size and impacts of projects that you can implement. In addition, large companies gather a lot of people with interesting background and profiles. That’s why I have stayed in Cofinoga for 17 years and i’m very happy of all the things that I lived there.
Nevertheless, launching your own business is a major risk, but is also a good way to « rise up » and take other responsibilities, towards your colleagues, investors, customers…
Having now a bit of background, I would say that we really progressed, while being totally responsible of our activity, with Laurent Sebag. The jobs we created (including our own), the solution we launched (app’s miles®) and the impact we have on our customer’s activity (≥30%) are the elements that make me proud of our projects. We are very glad to celebrate our 3rd anniversary, with already 10 active BtoB customers, and more to come!
Do you have any advice for people in the same situation as you were 3 years ago ?
For all the people which have an interest into launching their own company, I would have 5 advices instead of one:
- Find a real associate (not 20/80) that is complementary to your expertise and background (one should be a seller, the other one a manager) Share your capital, your roles, and respect its savoir-faire. You need him more than ever.
- From the start, collect feedbacks among your network, your “wannabe” customers. Has you service been waiting for? Do people acknowledge it? Is it really possible to get paid every month with your product?
- Never disregard aesthetics: if it is ugly, it is lost.
- Time is money… and it goes both ways!
- Don’t settle in a capital, but plan to spend 50% of your time in Paris (or in another capital)
Precisely, why settle in Bordeaux to create your own startup? Is it a “rich soil” in term of innovation?
A startup is more about history than geography!
Nevertheless, living in Bordeaux with a foot in Paris, the choice to settle our company in Bordeaux was obvious. There were many reasons to motivate that choice:
- First, the institutions, mentoring structures (Bordeaux Unitec, Digital Aquitaine…), financing entities (Aquitaine Amorçage, BPI, Region…) are all extremely to support project leader, but also very accessible. In less than a month, we had the opportunity to present our projects, find subventions and funding, meet an advisor to refine our cash flow plan… and even find an office space!
- Second, Bordeaux is a real hub for startups (like Nantes and Montpellier), gathering a lot of initiativse in healthcare (sim4health, Nomadeec, Invivox..), gaming, big data (Cogniteev, Qucit…), drones (Hawck)… This allows everyone to benefit from good practices and a local network of entrepreneurs.
- Finally, the Gironde has known true success stories during the last years (Cdiscount, Dolist, Millésima, Chateau-Online, MonMagasinGeneral) and is also a place for larger companies such as Maxicoffee, BeautySuccès, Jouets-club etc…
It is true that Bordeaux attract more and more companies, and the arrival of TGV (high-speed trains) putting the city at only 2h15 from Paris next summer will probably develop the local ecosystem even more. For us, it is a true opportunity to share more (through structures like Bordeaux Entrepreneurs or Connected Commerce Club) and also find more expertise in the area.
There are a lot of different sectors represented among your customers (insurance, banks, travel, retail…) but only a few from the fashion industry. Is it a choice ?
Absolutely not, we are actually discussing with the fashion industry in its broad sense and hope we will succeed to move fast on concrete projects.
For now, we are for example embedded in the new CELIO app. I’m sure that app’s miles® will provide tools and elements that are totally relevant for the sector: ease and award customers that inform their taste, sizes or loved points of sales; alert on new collections or special offers; but also reward shares or comments on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. All these will allow fashion brands to stay in contact with their customers between two purchases, two visits, in order to build a real relationship with them.
Are there specific difficulties in this sector? Are fashion companies and consumers ready to digitalize their interactions? Or is it another problem, such as integration in processes, data privacy or lack of contextualization possibilities?
In the fashion industry, customers have to see, touch, try and adjust clothing. What fits the model won’t fit me, but it is the piece that I want. Customers animation programs can address this process of decision and give the opportunity to better know and understand what is at stake. But, as you mentioned, a lot has to been done on the contextualization of offers and cooperation of customers to offer a product that is both relevant and experience-oriented.
We have heard a lot about omnicanal and multichannel for the past 10 years. Do you think omnicanal is now a reality?
I think a long period of evangelization and teaching was needed around these problematics, implying to merge a lot of tools that did not communicate between each other until now: client database, product database, CRM software, Social Network manager… Which is even more complicated for companies with a large distribution network and numerous points of sales.
The real dream would be to dispose on all channels of available discounts, PoS characteristics, stock left… Which basically implies all parts of a company, thus took time to be set-up, although retailers pushed towards it.
But omnicanal is not only about companies: nowadays, it is essential for consumers to have a better understanding of its profiles, its purchase history, its loyalty level. Luckily, on this topic, app’s miles® offers a complete and key solution, available on every channel: tablets in PoS, customer smartphone, website…
To conclude, any story you would like to share about your entrepreneur experience ?
I often thought startups will move fast : between the first contact and the set-up of a project, I forgot how much the timings of large companies and startups are different.. As a startup, our worst news is “We’ll talk about it in January or September” But it is part of the game!
Thank a lot to François for these more than relevant advices and this beautiful startup story!