City of Paris sets up its own marketplace to take Parisian boutiques to the world

The City of Paris has set up its own online marketplace to promote the creative heritage of the city and its many retailers, brands and artisans globally.

With the help and support of the Galeries Lafayette group and the City of Paris, www.paris.shopping has been created to gathers a carefully selected curation of unique products from more than 100 Parisian designers and boutiques. It is hoped that the new marketplace will put these Parisian brands in front of some 2 billion shoppers from all over the world, giving them access to all the cool, niche boutiques the city has to offer.

Included in the raft of retailers so far are boutiques such as La Trésorerie, Noyoco, Paris 85 and Maison Aimable, as well as local brands such as Hipanema, Faguo, Maison Sasy, Jamini, and La Chambre aux Confitures.

The move comes as these smaller retail brands seek to find ways to exploit the internet for retail. The ever changing scope and the level of competition on the Internet, is making it difficult and expensive for smaller brands to compete internationally. Marketplaces are the logical way to pursue this – gathering together a critical mass of retailers and their products in one place makes it easier to find.

Setting up a new marketplace from scratch to do this is less of a tried and tested method, however. It will be interesting to see how it fares: after all, how will anyone in China, Iran or Peru seeking things find it?

Paris’s reputation will do the work, believes Jérôme Dewavrin, co-founder and President of the company behind the launch.

“Paris is the international capital of creativity . Relying on this asset, we enable Paris’ trending boutiques and brands to benefit from our platform to become accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our objective is to bring the best of true Parisian fashion, design and lifestyle products to the world, while offering them a genuine and realistic experience of shopping in the trendiest Parisian shopping districts. Shopping in Paris allows you to be part of the soul and spirit of the capital. Until now the only way to be able to do this was to be physically in Paris!
– Jérôme Dewavrin, co-founder and President, Paris.shopping

Supported by the Galeries Lafayette Group, Paris Town Hall, JCDecaux, Makesense, Paris & Co, winner of BPI’s (Europe’s largest public bank) innovation contest and the EU, the company has already raised close to a million euros since its inception and has displayed great ambition.

And it plans to not only bring Paris to the world, but to eventually replicate the model with other cities.

“Since June and our fundraising efforts, we have been welcomed with an exalted enthusiasm by our partner boutiques and brands. In just a few weeks, more than 100 niche brands & boutiques have joined us. We work with influencers in fashion, lifestyle and design to select Parisian favourites Of course, Paris remains Paris. But the beauty of the concept is that it is reproducible in many regions that have a strong sense of culture and style. 2018 will be hectic!”
– Kevin Tayebaly, co-founder of PARIS.shopping

But Paris is not the first to tap into local character and, some might say, stereotypes. Back in 2017, thatschampionpet.co.uk was launched, which aimed to act as a marketplace selling to the world the joys of the culture and products of the North East of England.

Since its launch it has expanded to cover not only Newcastle, but also Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and, of course, Hull. While small, this shows that perhaps there is more to life than Amazon.