Feelunique, Europe‘s largest online beauty retailer, has announced the acquisition of Parfumeries Rive Droite, an upmarket French perfumery chain with four boutiques countrywide including its flagship store in Avenue Marceau in Paris. In a ground-breaking move, it is the first time a UK beauty retailer has expanded into the French market through acquiring an established French beauty chain.
Parfumeries Rive Droite, founded in 1986 and is the stockist of leading global brands including Chanel, Clarins, Dior as well as niche brands such as Valmont, Atelier Cologne and By Terry.
The four retail sites in Paris, Levallois-Perret, Boulogne-Billancourt and Neuilly-sur-Seine will be renamed as feelunique stores and plans are in place to enable brands instore to be available online to customers in France and worldwide. The perfumeries Rive Droite management team will remain with the business.
To oversee the integration of Parfumeries Rive Droite and launch the online business, Claire Blandin has been appointed as Managing Director of feelunique in France. Claire was formerly Purchasing Director of Beauté Privée, France‘s leading online beauty flash sales retailer and Beauty Buyer at Monoprix. In addition, Fabric Rimbault, currently head of Parfumeries Rive Droite will become Operations Director of feelunique France.
Commenting on the news, feelunique CEO Joel Palix said:
“France is already a key market for feelunique and one that has huge potential, particularly online. As an acquisition Parfumeries Rive Droite delivery the perfect combination of a small number of stores in primary locations, exclusive French stockist of a strong selection of premium and niche brands, an experienced management team and gives us a real opportunity to further localise our business, servicing our French customers even better.”
In celebration of the launch of feelunique France, the company will open a pop up store for Christmas, showcasing a selection of the most established and best new breakthrough British brands.
The health and beauty e-tailer is flourishing. Its move into France follows the opening of a new distribution centre earlier this month, that will allow it to process over 2m orders next year.
