Vente-privee.com launches food site

Burgundy “Jus de cassis”

Vente-privee.com has long passed the stage where it was merely a site
requesting membership in order to purchase clothes and related products. It now has a range including CDs, tickets for concerts and theatre shows, foreign trips, high-tech equipment, even wine and
champagne.

The success coming from the wine and champagne sales has urged the group,
calling itself “France’s largest wine sales channel on the internet”, to take
the next step. Thursday will see the launch of vente-privee.com’s newest site,
‘Miam miam’. It will offer a new home-grown product every day, starting out with Burgundy ‘jus de cassis’.

Become a “huge Swiss knife”

Vente-privee.com, created 12 years ago, has some
13 million members and a daily range of 2.5 million visitors. The 2012
turnover was 1.3 billion euro, an 22 % increase compared to 2011. To maintain
that growth, it felt the need to diversify: for 2013
vente-privee.com expects the growth to ‘slow’ to a 16 % increase, resulting in a
1.5 billion euro turnover.

The webshop has also recently purchased French start-up PassVip, a company selling advertising to retailers and
catering based on geo-localization. All participants will regularly receive
exclusive offers from local stores that have opted-in.

All retailers wishing to use the service have to pay a monthly subscription,
something that nearly 5,000 stores have
already done. The name has been changed from PassVip to Vente-privee Le Pass just last week. A
few of the stores joining in are Vero Moda, Planet Sushi, Alinea and Maison de
la Literie.

“E-commerce as it has been up until
now, is dead”, says co-founder and CEO Jacques-Antoine Granjon. “The
customer now requires freedom to buy either online or in a store.
Vente-privee.com has to become a huge Swiss knife with an increasing number of
services and ways to consume.”