“With GaiaSuite, we simplify back-office technology”

Fashion tech entrepreneur, Diaa Elyaacoubi bought Monnier Paris, an e-commerce site for luxury accessories, with the aim of developing and offering luxury players, via its spin-off (subsidiary) GaiaSuite, a software solution to optimize and manage their omnichannel digital distribution.

Tell us about your beginnings as a software engineer at the dawn of the Internet

Diaa Elyaacoubi: I started my career as an engineer in the 2000s, at the height of the Internet and telecommunications boom and in particular at the time of their deregulation by the European Union. Operators like SFR and Bouygues Telecom emerged, then a myriad of new ones.

Employed at Cegetel, I designed, within a team, the networks, offers, price lists, business models for the general public and btob. It was extraordinary to be able to participate in the first free Internet. We knew that everything we had known so far was going to be turned upside down. A field of possibilities opened up.

How did you move from tech to the world of luxury?

Whether in tech or in any other industry, it is clear that the giants are not French. We have the genius, the know-how, but we lack the ambition and political courage. When it comes to tech and leadership, I have always been fascinated by Asia, particularly China. To better understand, I went back and forth there for eight years. It was at that moment that I became passionate about e-commerce and in particular their approach to the “customer journey”, both for digital and for physical commerce.

I discovered an extremely innovative approach with new possibilities: live shopping, the creation of communities to share purchases, social selling, etc. Everything is designed to facilitate the operation and innovation of the platforms.

In the United States, players like Meta or Amazon have been able to design and build crossroads platforms capable of reaching a maximum number of people, then transforming the audience into a transaction.

Whereas in France, before the Covid crisis, less than 10% of French sales were made online. And this, twenty years after the arrival of the Internet. This is a basic observation to point out that digital was not at the heart of the brands' strategy.

However, if we are not the most innovative country in e-commerce, we can at least pride ourselves on being the cradle of luxury. However, this industry, envied and respected, continues to lag behind in its international distribution.

My first observation, before investing in Monnier Paris, was therefore that luxury – like lifestyle and fashion – is a sector poorly equipped from a technological point of view, even though it represents extraordinary power and an ecosystem. This sector is fragmented between large groups, which absorb innovation, but are not promoters of it, and medium-sized players, who are too conservative.

My second observation is that France does not have an e-commerce platform worthy of the name while the English had Farfetch (today owned by the South Korean Coupang, editor's note), Matchesfashion (Frasers Group), Net à Porter ( Yoox Net-a-porter Group, owned by Richemont, which will be acquired My Theresa in early 2025, Editor's note), the Germans Mytheresa, the Italians Louisa via Roma. In France, we have 24S (LVMH), Galeries Lafayette and Printemps.

Due to the technological delay of French sales platforms, you bought Monnier Paris?

Buying Monnier Paris in 2020 allowed me to save time. Today, creating a platform with 180 high-end brands has become an extremely complicated project. However, Monnier already had many brands and, more importantly, more than two thirds of its turnover internationally.

As soon as I arrived, I overhauled and decomplexified the entire technological platform. In short, I used Monnier as a real laboratory to better understand the issues of e-distribution and social selling (live shopping, metaverse, cryptos, etc.).

Today, social networks are audience tools, but tomorrow they will be transactional. Faced with this wealth of contact points, which will continue to increase, we are entering a new era of platforms. And to do this, brands must equip themselves with agile tools capable of automating tasks to be part of a pure omnichannel strategy (physical store, website, marketplace).

Beyond selling fashion accessories, what is your business plan?

Monnier Paris has therefore been our laboratory while ensuring that it maintains its leadership in luxury platforms in France. But above all, it allowed us to put our finger on the huge delay that luxury and lifestyle brands are experiencing in their e-distribution, particularly internationally.

In parallel with Monnier, we therefore developed GaiaSuite, a software solution allowing brands to be more efficient and effective in seeking growth and profitability.

How does the spin-off GaiaSuite meet the demand for an omnichannel retail market?

We want to be the technological partner of brands for the luxury industry and help them gain agility. Our ambition is to simplify back-office technology and migrations, by offering ready-to-use solutions that place business objectives at the heart of back-office processes.

GaiaSuite is designed with simple interfaces that provide a unified, real-time view of sales while maintaining control over pricing, marketing and product presentation. In short, we propose to brands, distributors, marketplaces or marketing agencies to move from a whosale strategy to e-concession (a retail model allowing brands to sell via a platform, Editor's note).