Nicolas Metzke
The Digital Club Franco-Allemand is offering 50% discount on tickets to NEXT Berlin April 23-24
2013 is the year of the 50th anniversary of the Elysée treaty. To commemorate and celebrate this historical event Google’s Cultural Institute has digitized the contract including signatures of Kondrad Adenauer and Charles De Gaulle extending it’s lifetime into an era that has not much in common anymore with the year 1963. The Digital Club […]
Ykone wants to build the bridge of Social Fashion between France and the US
When Ykone sent me the announcement about the opening of their US office I first thought this was the dumbest idea I have heard this year. The use of social media by US brands is years ahead compared to France, in particular within Fashion and Luxury brands. I experienced this first hand when I participated […]
Ykone's Fashion Event FLOW is LeWeb for Fashion
Nobody would argue that the fashion business was late in opening up to social media. Iconic designers locked the doors as long as they could, considering themselves closer to god than to their clients. Then the social fashion revolution happened through an uncountable number of fashion blogs that popped-up across the globe – many in […]
Lyst: The 4 Keys to Success for a Fashion Startup
Buying fashion online is very hard. On the one side you’ve got a huge choice of online fashion stores that offer everything ranging from high-end designer clothing on sites like Net-a-porter or Farfetch to the other extreme of stores offering convenience items like socks at competitive costs such as Archiduchesse. And on the other side now, […]
CapGemini's new study redefines the Digital Shopper
I am about to launch my new E-Commerce business in a few weeks, thus I screen everything I see that touches on this subject and even more though when it covers Fashion as a market segment. When I saw this new study published by my former colleagues of Cap Gemini “the Digital Relevancy” I first […]
l'Oreal's iPhone app Color Genius: is it really Shazam for make-up?
One rumor about the reason why Steve Jobs always wore the same outfit, was that he considered this “one less thing to worry about”. For the Rude Baguette readers who aren’t fashionistas and not following this week’s craziness of Paris’ Haute-Couture fashion shows, likely about 99% of all readers: In beauty and fashion the choice […]
Jirafe – yet another US company who does their R&D in France
When was the last time you heard about a US start-up building an operation in France and considering this as an asset? Usually you hear about French entrepreneurs moving abroad, but not American companies building offices in Paris; and those who do mostly consider this a necessary constraint, but not a strategic decision for their […]
Paris & Berlin – The tale of two cities (Part 2: The Startup Ecosystem)
In last week’s post I compared Paris and Berlin from a macro-economic and historical perspective. This time I want to share my analysis on the start-up ecosystem. My conclusion upfront: Paris has a very active start-up community, but Berlin wins the battle. See why below: Paris is the world’s capital! Paris is the world’s most […]
Paris & Berlin – The tale of two cities (Part 1: The facts you can't ignore)
Nicolas Metzke examines the economic, historical, and georgraphical attributes of the two cities to make an initial assessment of which city is better suited as a startup hub.
For or Against: The CopyCat Debate
Copycats kill European innovation “Copycats kill European innovation”: those were the words that Loic Le Meur (@loic) put up in front of an audience of French entrepreneurs who came together at the TechCrunch France Remix event in November 2010 to hear about success stories and for networking with other Internet entrepreneurs. Loic is very well […]