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Frenchman Brings in Organic European Brands

Writer:   | Editor: Vince Xie  | From:  | Updated: 2016-07-20

 

 

    Loic Kobes

(Cindy)

Want to have a taste of water extracted from birch trees? An e-commerce website founded by two French entrepreneurs might be your choice for finding exclusive and original brands from Europe. Loic Kobes, along with his partner and best friend from France, started a business called Cool Hobo in August last year. Through WeChat and the website, they wanted to bring authentic European brands to Shenzhen customers directly."We are building a new channel to sell quality brands from Europe and now we are developing a VR model to help Chinese customers explore production and the places where the products were made and how they were consumed," said Kobes.

Before starting the business, Kobes was employed at the headquarters of Ole' supermarket in Shenzhen, a chain store selling imported brands and owned by CR Vanguard. "Initially, I was a buyer and later my mission was to transform Ole'. To start that, we had changed the supply chain," said Kobes who helped open around 30 more stores all over China, from metropolises to small towns. But as Kobes's work progressed, he realized that more needed to be done from the higher level of the company because he found that customers did not actually know the stories behind the imported brands.

After resigning from the supermarket chain, Kobes attempted to explore a new platform to connect Chinese customers with the brands directly, without any distributors in between. To achieve that, the startup, comprised of two Frenchmen and two Chinese, contacted European manufacturers directly and composed WeChat articles and created the website to introduce the products.

"All of the information we provide online are in Chinese because we are targeting Chinese consumers,"said Kobes. The startup has already started working with 40 brands, and 90 percent of the products are organic and handmade packaged food, including three brands of birch water that became popular in Paris and London but aren't well known in China. The team is now developing a VR model to showcase the products to make the connection more real.

Kobes said that they chose Shenzhen as their starting point because the city has a large group of dynamic and open-minded young consumers. The startup has confidence that these consumers would be more likely to accept new things and quality brands than their counterparts in other cities of China. But there are also challenges faced by Kobes and his team. Though the young consumers tend to accept new brands, they are also more demanding and less loyal to the products they purchase under the dynamic environment of logistics and e-commerce.