Interview of Yves Ruffet – Lead Partner Growth DACH & FR, Stylight
Hello Yves, thank you for agreeing to answer our questions and to explain your market positioning.
Can you quickly present Stylight and its positioning? And your role within this structure?
Stylight is the world’s leading search platform for fashion, beauty and home furnishings. Since 2008, we have been helping online consumers in 16 countries around the world discover over 1,500 online shops at once and compare prices for over 50,000 brands. With just one click, users who show an interest in our partners’ products are redirected to their online shop. Our users simply complete their order online, it increases traffic, direct sales and awareness of their shop.
My role at Stylight is to lead our sales teams in the DACH regions and in France, where we work with large multi-channel brands such as Asos or IKEA. We also work with global and iconic brands such as HUGO BOSS, Swarovski or The Kooples, as well as hundreds of other shops, including local and emerging players.
What are Stylight’s strengths compared to other markets ?
The brands and retailers we work with often appreciate Stylight’s ability to meet their traffic volume expectations, while listing their products in a visually appealing environment. In addition to the standard listing of their products on our search pages, our partner shops receive additional visibility in the magazine section of our site. In addition, our teams provide personalised account management to each partner, allowing them to benefit from their market expertise and valuable advice in each region where we operate.
What is your advertiser selection policy? How do you choose the brands you work with? (sectors of activity, size of advertisers, minimum traffic, positioning…)
We work with advertisers in three main segments: fashion, home furnishings and beauty. For brands with a luxury or premium positioning, we also offer two dedicated sections on our site: the Luxury Loft and Premium Loft. In terms of the size of the advertisers we work with, we work with specialist brands with hundreds of products, but also with large retailers with millions of products. Before starting any partnership with a new online shop, our experts will arrange an initial telephone discussion with the store to assess the potential of a partnership and to develop a plan to ensure its success.
What is Stylight’s pricing (how are the CPCs defined for each sector?)
Stylight has been a CPC platform since the very beginning, and we have over 14 years of experience in achieving results with this model. CPCs vary depending on the segment (fashion, home decor or beauty) and the device from which clicks are generated. Our account managers discuss the appropriate rate with each shop wishing to list their products on Stylight. Our partners can also customise their CPCs for the product categories of their choice through our CPC bidding system. We also offer a 4-week trial period to each new partner, allowing them to test our platform with a limited minimum amount.
If you had to give advice to a brand that is hesitating to launch itself on a comparison site like Stylight, what would be your arguments to convince them?
If I had one thing to say to them, it would be “you don’t have to jump in head first”. I mentioned in the previous question the trial period that we offer to our new partners, and I think that it is the perfect opportunity for them to test our platform. I would advise them to list, for one or two months, only their best performing products, and in one of the markets in which they are already established, in order to be able to evaluate our platform properly. Our experts are present throughout this test to ensure the success of the campaign. I am convinced that with Stylight you will find the right partner to acquire relevant volume and that we will become an essential part of your marketing strategy in the future and in different markets over time.
