Publisher Lagardère Active launches online Elle Store

By

Matthieu Guinebault

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Dec 15, 2017

After buying curated fashion marketplace Shopcade last February, Lagardère Active announced the launch of Elle Store, an online marketplace featuring the top picks of Elle magazine's fashion, beauty and lifestyle editors.  The deployment will be followed next spring by a similar initiative for Public.fr, the website of the lifestyle magazine published by French media and audiovisual group Lagardère Active, also the publisher of Elle.

The Elle Store initially showcases a range of 350 French and international ready-to-wear and accessories labels, as well as beauty, home decoration, stationery and other products. Among the website's labels, the publisher mentioned Athé, Vanessa Bruno, Balzac Paris, Nanushka, Mer du Nord and Tara Jarmon.

 "Brands work with us in order to increase the visibility of their collections, and they sell their products on the marketplace directly," said Constance Benqué, President of Elle France and Elle International. "It is also a way for our editorial team to highlight emerging trends through the product selection," she added. "Featuring a marketplace within our brands' consumer information sections, in line with our editorial policies, allows us to diversify our digital revenues and add to our customer knowledge," said Corinne Denis, in charge of digital and revenue growth at Lagardère Active.

The Elle Store will also benefit from the experience gained over the years through Shopcade. Launched in 2011, Shopcade landed in France in 2016, and is a valuable tool to boost audience engagement and insight. Of this audience, 86% is reportedly made up of women aged 25-49, 29.1% of whom are classified as high-income.

It isn't the first time that Elle magazine launches an e-store. A previous effort was halted in the summer of 2014, only two years after the launch. The closure took place when the group was involved in a far-reaching job-protection plan, featuring the closing down of ten magazines, among them Be, which also operated its own e-shop.