How the French label NotShy Cashmere wants to double its sales

NotShy Cashmere is a French fashion label that, as the name suggests, offers cashmere fashion that is not overly shy. The label, which was founded 25 years ago, has been very successful in France and Europe to this day. The main brand of the MCC Group (NotShy, Absolut Cashmere, Kshmr Tribu brands) is driving sales figures and prompting management to expect sales of 40 million euros by 2022. A chat with co-director and co-founder Olivier Criq.

In recent years, NotShy has gained a lot of visibility. How did you do that?

Olivier Criq: First of all, you have to know that there are two brands in the group: NotShy and a brand called Absolut Cashmere. The existence of the second brand came to support the first. Then we gained a lot of notoriety over the last four years because we decided to push development. Originally we were mainly active in the wholesale business. We were insignificant in retail, only owning two or three stores, which was symbolic, and we had extremely little communication. Then, when the first fund – M Capital Partners – came along, we decided to shift gears to increase our revenues accordingly. So budgets were allocated for communication in magazines and in the press. We chose a first muse, Malgosia Bela, and were fortunate to have some extraordinary releases with Claudia Schiffer and the Kardashians. That helped us a lot.

Over the next two years we worked with Pernille Teisbaek, a major Scandinavian influencer who works a lot with Chanel, Cartier and other luxury brands. That went well with the image of our brand. We’ve worked with her two years in a row and that’s raised our profile a lot, especially with a slightly different clientele – she appeals to a slightly older clientele than the online clientele.

How did you develop your retail strategy?

[In dieser Phase] we decided to open boutiques [Anm. d. Red.: Die Gruppe hat derzeit 40 eigene Verkaufsstellen in Frankreich, darunter 35 NotShy-Boutiquen]. In addition, for our stores we have mainly worked in holiday resorts such as Deauville, Le Touquet, Cannes, Saint-Tropez, Cap-Ferret, Megève, Courchevel. We are in places that fit the brand well. We’re based in Paris, of course, but settling in big cities like Lyon or Marseille wasn’t a priority for us, especially as we had a loyal wholesale clientele. Out of respect for the work they had done for the brand, we tried not to overlook them. And when that was the case, like in Cannes or Saint-Tropez, we negotiated deals with them to continue working with them and help them grow sales together with us.

Incidentally, we also opened a shop right in the heart of Val d’Isère, which has a large British clientele. When we open a store like this, we try to gain international exposure.

And we’ve followed the same scheme with Absolut Cashmere, where we have fewer stores but they’re all in places with the same profile. That means we have two boutiques in Deauville, one NotShy, one Absolut, the same goes for Cannes, Megève, Saint-Tropez. This is how we make our own competition.

And where would you like to open in the future?

I know there are three places we’re mainly missing: in Paris, in the Marais, in Rue de Passy, ​​possibly a Parisian flagship, and in Aix-en-Provence, but that’s a work in progress. And we’re looking for the other two. By the summer of 2023, though, something will happen.

What are the challenges for NotShy and Absolut Cashmere today?

The first challenge is the ecommerce site. With my partner Jean-Pascal Candau, we concentrated on expanding the online business. This is extremely important. There are brands that I mention with great respect without comparing myself to them, like Sézane or Jonak, that have achieved exceptional results on the web. Currently, our online sales for both brands are 10 percent of their sales. We want to increase it to 25 percent. We made big investments [Anm. d. Red.: Not Shy hat Vereinbarungen mit der Firma WShop] for 2022 and 2023, so by the end of 2023 I think we’re going to have about 20 percent of sales coming from the web.

On the other hand, this desire for notoriety may have to be outsourced to a logistics company, because you need real specialists to process a very large number of parts. We are also in the process of signing agreements with a customer service that will be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

What are the group’s next projects?

We try to bind our wholesale customers very strongly to us. We must not neglect them. After all, they are established customers who have been working with us for a very long time. And we are in the process of introducing what is known as the omnichannel concept for next winter with a large proportion of our customers. I think this will create an even closer connection between us and our retailers because they will find that everything we do online is going in a direction that is also aligned with them. This is something very important.

Our plan is also to open stores in all European capitals. When I say ‘capitals’ I mean Milan, Brussels, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona. We are planning with a time frame of about 18 months. We will try to do this in partnership with our agents starting this winter [Not Shy und Absolut Cashmere haben mehr als 100 Agenten] and importers to implement. We always try to involve the people who stayed with the brand and got us started. We owe it to them because they are highly motivated and know the brand well.

This article was previously published on FashionUnited.fr. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ