Startup OYST wins the second “LVMH Innovation Award” at Viva Technology 2018

Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of LVMH, and Alexandre Arnault, CEO of Rimowa, presented the LVMH Innovation Award to French startup Oyst, a specialist in e-commerce, on the second day of Viva Technology.

The second LVMH Innovation Award was announced on Friday 25 May during Viva Technology, the annual technology event dedicated to the digital evolution, organised by Les Echos and Publicis. The 30 startups from around the world had previously been selected as finalists from more than 800 applicants to join the LVMH Luxury Lab and to compete in the “LVMH Innovation Award”.

Created in 2017 by the LVMH Group, this award aims to bring to the surface fresh ideas in the business and luxury sector, and to discover, support and identify the best startups whose innovative ideas address the challenges facing the LVMH group. The winning start-up will have the opportunity to join the LVMH Maisons des Startups at Station F, and benefit from the support of the Group and its Maisons for a year.

“This year, we received 820 applications on the LVMH online registration platform, compared to 500 the first year. This enthusiasm shows the interest of startups to participate in a competition that gives them increased visibility and unique opportunities to collaborate. Through this award, we wish to reaffirm the values ​​of creativity, innovation, excellence and entrepreneurship that are the pillars of the LVMH Group” explains Ian Rogers, Chief Digital Officer at LVMH.

The startup Oyst, co-founded in January 2016 by Julien Foussard and Quentin Vigneau, responds to an important and increasingly recurrent challenge in the retail sector: conversion rates. Oyst is in fact part of the finding that the conversion rate in the e-commerce sector was much too low compared to that of physical stores (about 2% against 55%), due notably to the complexity of the shopping experience imposed on users. Julien Foussard therefore had the idea to reduce the eight steps commonly required by the customer to finalize an online purchase to one single step, thanks to a command button accessible in one click, on all pages of the e-commerce sites, without having to systematically enter a log in.

“We share common values ​​with LVMH, especially regarding our preoccupation with the customer experience. At Oyst, we are committed to anticipating the shopping of tomorrow and seeking to build the simplest and most fluid shopping experience. We are proud and happy to collaborate with the LVMH group which will allow us to establish our legitimacy in our market and, we hope, to develop abroad,” says Julien Foussard, co-founder of the startup Oyst.

Two special mentions have also been awarded to start-ups VeChain, which is developing a blockchain information sharing ecosystem so that everyone can verify the authenticity of a product, and Kronos Care, which reinvents the post-purchase experience with its Omnichannel solution for brands and retailers.