To understand the history of Veepee, you have to delve into that of its founder.
The history of Jacques-Antoine Granjon, CEO and founder of Veepee.
Jacques-Antoine Granjon was born in Marseille on 9 August 1962 in a family where the entrepreneurial bug is passed on from generation to generation. He definitely caught the bug at the European Business School (EBS) where he met his first partner, Julien Sorbac. With 20,000 French francs in hand, the pair launched Cofotex, a small business specialised in the bulk sale of end-of-season items. Their entrepreneurial adventure took off in 1985.
Genuine success came 20 years later, with the advent of digital technology and ADSL. The economic boom of the 2000 years was experienced as follows: “I remember a friend giving me this precious advice: it’s like a jungle out there, you pick up your machete, and you hack your way forward, if you take a wrong turn, you retreat and hack another path“, recalls Jacques-Antoine Granjon.
A recommendation followed to the letter by Veepee’s founder. At the dawn of the 2000 years, Jacques-Antoine Granjon and his partners were making more than 200 million French francs in revenue from bulk sales. The acquisition of the former printing presses of French daily Le Monde in 1996 at La Plaine Saint-Denis was one of the factors that contributed to the success of Veepee’s growth.
One building. One territory. Veepee now owns six buildings in Seine-Saint-Denis – including Le Vérone inaugurated in January 2016 –, and establishments in 10 countries.
“Digital allows this permanent change, without ever forgetting the reality: customer satisfaction, whether brands or members”.
Admittedly, the idea is ingenious: move bulk sales online, continue buying the unsold stock of designer brands at low prices in order to resell them at a discount in a virtual shop, directly to the end customer; but “it’s the execution that matters, and the quality of the women and men who apply it on a daily basis” insists Jacques-Antoine Granjon. “Thanks to e-commerce, the walls of the virtual shop can be extended infinitely”.
Launched in 2001, the Veepee website proposes the stocks of designer brands to members at highly discounted prices on a 100% digital platform. At a time where e-commerce was still in its infant stages in Europe, the concept was unheard off. ”The secret lies in knowing how to reinvent yourself”, confides Jacques-Antoine Granjon.
For 20 years, Veepee can therefore be summed up as: tirelessly creating a daily desire, and transforming a digital promise into genuine customer satisfaction. “It’s relentless pressure. E-commerce is a 24/7 business”, says the CEO who, with his 5,000 employees, has raised Veepee to the rank of European e-commerce leader with a business volume amounting to 3 billion euros in 2022.
From strategic acquisitions (vente-exclusive.com, Privalia, eboutic.ch), to the launch of the platform dedicated to travel – Veepee Travel – not forgetting
acquisitions of equity interests in tens of start-ups (adot, daco, Scalia...), provide the opportunity to be in permanent contact with innovations that can be used to improve the tools and services, Veepee is active on all fronts.
“I’m only interested in the long-term vision of our adventure: it is also our duty to build sustainably for future generations”, repeats Jacques-Antoine Granjon who is socially active, particularly through the Veepee foundation created in 2009, and which is reflected in the creation of jobs, the employability level of Veepee employees, the constant concern to augment social protection, or the promotion of all forms of diversity in the company.
Today, Veepee has 66 million members based in ten countries in the world. Jacques-Antoine Granjon and his partners are still the majority shareholders of the company, after welcoming the American investment fund Summit Partners in 2007, Qatar Holding in 2013, and Sofina in 2016. “Being an entrepreneur means being free”, points out Jacques-Antoine Granjon. Preserving the independence of Veepee is certainly of critical importance for the founders of the company.
“We’re lucky to be still at the beginning of the adventure’’, he confides, twenty years after the creation of Veepee.