In this section, we invite you to discover portraits of women through their career paths and experiences. They will also share their advice and their vision of retail.
For this new "Femmes du retail" event, we interviewed Sabrina Piperno, Founder of Heureux les Curieux, a retail concept in the heart of the Marais district.
Hello, can you introduce yourself?
Sabrina Piperno, I'm the creator of Heureux les Curieux, a concept I launched 5 years ago in the Marais district of Paris.
What was your background?
When I started working on this project 7/8 years ago, e-commerce was booming and many people were saying "Retail is dead". The concept of the pop-up store didn't exist, and I thought that digital brands would always need meeting places. And that consumers would always need to see and touch products.
Given my expertise background in brand support and development, I was keen to help digital brands launch into physical retail.
In the meantime, a large number of ephemeral boutiques have sprung up. Unlike other pop-up stores, my idea was to create a truly perennial space, one that wasn't just a rental space riding the wave of real-estate opportunism. The idea was to welcome brands that we could accompany from editorial line to sales, integrating scenography and communication in a no-brainer mode.
"Retail is detail. So that brands can concentrate on their know-how and their rendezvous with their community, we have the capacity to manage everything else. For brands, this space acts as an incubator and a place to meet their customers and launch products.
Today, we also welcome major brands who use us either as a test site, an "off-site" meeting place or a brand activation space. This concept is above all designed to support brand development, and our ambition is to bring real retail innovation. To respond to a search for meaning, a notion that's important to me.
We can also welcome a foundation, a start-up... It's the project that's important. I tend to say that anything can be done as long as it makes sense and brings additional value to both consumers and brands, since it's a B2B2C concept.
What challenges have you had to overcome as an entrepreneur, and what advice would you give to women?
My challenge has been a very feminine problem: imposter syndrome. This means that you don't feel you're up to the job or legitimate, so you have to "go the extra mile" to justify your place. In the end, this entrepreneurial project gave me confidence. When I look back, I wonder why I set all those crippling limits.
The advice I'd give to women for whom this is a subject is to exchange ideas with other women entrepreneurs they're leaning towards, by contacting them directly or through specialized clubs or associations, for example. With hindsight, we may be able to save a lot of time by sharing our experiences.
What do you see as the next trends in retail?
I believe that retail should offer what digital cannot. Tomorrow's point of sale will be a meeting place, an experience with a soul, and more than just a place to buy.
The fact that we go out of our way to store is justified by the search for pleasure and therefore for shopping comfort. I like to talk about the concept of "slow shopping", because that's what we offer at Heureux les Curieux. In fact, only half of the first floor is dedicated to sales. The rest of the space on the first floor and lower level is dedicated to editorial, to tell and sublimate the brand's story, as well as to workshops, experiences or other brand needs (wholesale, press...).
It's important to introduce a notion of surprise and discovery, but also more seasonality in the treatment of the point of sale. Increasingly, retail players are thinking in terms of CSR. This leads me to a number of reflections, notably by building bridges between the physical point of sale and :
- the art world to make it more accessible,
- social, to give a voice to virtuous companies or associations and create links,
- cities by adding ancillary services to local shops (e.g. the development of tobacconists selling credit cards or metro tickets).
Thank you to Sabrina Piperno for this interview. See you soon for another portrait of the "women of retail".