La Boutonnière is a fashion and lifestyle co-creation start-up. The concept is easy to understand: it build the bridge between brands and clients, so that they can choose the clothes they like for the next collection. The consumer is at the heart of the creation process, and feel invested in and involved by the brand.

Yet we don’t know any serious competitor for La Boutonnière, but a few brands also managed to include their clients in their creations, like Dop or Danette, which often organize contest on the next flavors of their products. We could also quote other brands like Disney Infinity, or Decathlon, which interact a lot with their consumers.

Who are you ?

Today we are 3 associated, 2 being at the origin of the start up : Coralie and Ralph.

We met in 2010 during our studies at the business school IESEG (IONIS group), then we both have done a specialized master at EMLYON.

During this last year of study, we have had the occasion to work with Michel & Augustin, which has sharpened our wish to deepen participatory marketing and to create La Boutonnière (beginning of 2015).

At the beginning of 2016, we met Sébastien Valentini who is today CTO of La Boutonnière. Sebastien has 15 years of experience in his field, and has experienced significant growth in the startup where he worked at the management of related issues.

Describe us how did you have this idea ?

“The consumer wants to be the object of attention and feel the heart of the brand projects, feel engine. The consumer wants everything now, he wants to know, he wants to participate” Vincent Gregoire, director at the agency Nelly Rodi.

This sentence from Vincent Gregoire has been our leitmotiv for a few months. We are living a technologic revolution which impacts deeply our consumer’s habits and living habits. Becoming an actor of this revolution and taking part of it is one of our common motivation.

Today the consumer exchange, criticize and wants to interact with brands. Some of the brands got it and have integrated it in their ADN (Michel & Augustin or le Slip Français) and they build their adventure with their consumers.

From this statement, we wanted to propose to brands, a solution that enables them to integrate their consumers in their brands identity, and to create value with them. The co-creation between brands and consumers appeared to us like the perfect answer because brands are closer to their consumers, and consumers are the heart of their activity.

How does it work exactly ?

We would like to propose to the brands a toolbox of co-creation, which will enable them to collaborate with their consumers on all their value chain.

So we have two tools, which are on the conception. These tools are in the form of a co-creation platform for each brand.

• Create it : enable the consumers to create products via a 3D configurator. Easy and ludic, it easily engages the community in a brand, but also provides data about the products and the best combinations
• Imagine it : enable the consumers, on the base of a creative brief given, to submit their product ideas via a dedicated form. This stimulates creativity and innovation of the community and allows to source new ideas for the brand

Both of this two tools work like a campaign during 2 or 3 weeks. The brand invites her community to create and vote for the propositions. At the end of every campaign, she chooses between the most appreciated propositions, the products she puts in her collection.

Three months ago, we’ve launched co-creation platforms of the brands Scottage and Bonobo. The results of the first campaigns were excellent.

Scottage products were in sell since 1 month, and those products are 4 time better compare to the selling of the other products from the brand. We have also given to Scottage new consumers thanks to the participation to the co-creation campaign.

For Bonobo, the results are also excellent, and the collection will be in sell at the end of August in all the shops, and from today we already have request to buy those products.

Both of the brands are launching new campaign of co-creation on their platform in September.

Your best and worse memory about being a contractor?

Best souvenir : When a very famous brand that we have not canvassed and which all the members of our team are fan of, wrote to us “First, congratulations for your project, it’s very relevant and well done. I’ve followed the Bonobo campaign, congrats to you all!” To be continued…

Worse souvenir : Spending few weeks on a recruitment and discovering few days after that we don’t have the good person. And in a startup this is crucial because you can lose a lot of time, that’s what happened to us.

Where did you get the idea of your name ?

When we started our activity, we thought we would work especially with ready to wear brands, but it won’t be the case tomorrow because we want to widen at all the lifestyle : shoes, leather goods, accessories, beauty, food, decoration, etc.

So first we were looking for a French name, which refers to fashion, which symbolize fashion and rally, because we create a link between brands and consumers. So we found out that “La Boutonnière” gathers all those characteristics.

 

Your typical day ?

• Lecture of the news to soak up the entrepreneurial ecosystem and fashion, I read Madyness, Fashion jobs and social networks which are good information sources I think.
• Answer to the emails (administrative emails which take a big part of my day)
• Brief with the team to set goals of the day and see if we are late on something
• Trying to improve our solution, and see if there is new competitors
• Trying to find solutions to be more seen on the social networks, the management of our partner brands, and right now make funding application files.

 

Any advices for young contractors ?

• Find the best team: fundamental, you have to be sure to have constitute the best team with the required skills to do the project correctly.
• To build a good capital which allowed you to survive during the first month (lovemoney, subventions, etc)
• Build a network to find clients/prescriptors or partners, increase your visibility and confront your project with its evolution.
• To keep as much as possible your social life, because you can loose very quickly your friends and family because we don’t have the same daily as before.

 

Your goals for next year ?

In 2017 we hope to raise funds in Q1 to recruit, improve our tools together to create and establish itself as key player in the field of co-creation.

 

If some firms are already starting to include their clients in the creation process, nobody has ever thought about making a business out of it. It’s a bold but brilliant idea, and we hope for La Boutonnière that they will achieve their goals to evolve positively. Stay clear !