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Evolution of alcohol consumption and the market for de-alcoholisation
The evolution of alcohol consumption in Europe is leading many industry players to rethink their offer. In this article, we return in particular to the initiative launched by Philippe Stassen and the Meurens brothers who are joining forces to propose a new de-alcoholisation offer in the Charleroi region. Alcohol consumption in Europe In France, alcohol consumption has been on the decline for nearly 80 years. While a Frenchman consumed...
PayLead: A new wave of loyalty in the world of banking
PayLead is redefining banking loyalty by offering consumers the opportunity to be compensated in proportion to their purchases from their business partners. In this article, we return to the initiative launched by Charles de Gastines and Jacquelin Becheau La Fonta nearly three years ago. Summary Presentation of the company Genesis and history The fields of application How does it work? The future and key figures Presentation of the...
Boco Brussels: the reasons behind the failure
Boco Brussels is over. The franchise was held by Star Food Company, who initiated legal reorganisation proceedings before the Brussels Commercial Court. This is the end of the Boco adventure in Belgium, a concept we have been following since its very beginnings. We had also met a long time ago with its co-founder Simon Ferniot (brother of the chef and TV presenter of the same name, also co-founder) to talk to us about a concept that,...
French economy ministry uses data to predict bankruptcy and help firms
Anticipating the failure of businesses is a challenge both for entrepreneurs and for the State itself. Did you know that a bankruptcy, beyond the financial and emotional cost it represents for the entrepreneur, also represents a burden for the State? Bankruptcy is indeed a judicial process that often requires complex procedures involving multiple parties (court, trustees, creditors,…). Avoiding bankruptcies, helping companies to...
Customer Experience: Polette puts sex toys in a shop window display
Last week, a shop window display aroused my interest as I walked through the streets of downtown Brussels. I was not the only one to stop in front of the Polette store, rue du Marché aux Herbes. How could it have been otherwise when moving sex toys were displayed in the window? In the series of interactive store windows, this one is at least, quite remarkable. Market research is also about that: observe trends. We have interviewed...
How to use market research to get prepared for export
While market research is obviously essential before the creation of a company, it is not the only time when the different techniques that make it up can be applied. Entering a foreign market (for example, an export market) is another case where market research is crucial. Not only is this a new market for you and your company, but it is likely that this export adventure will be further complicated by the lack of knowledge about the...
The secrets of conducting market research or how to ensure the success of your (future) business: Part 3
How to do market research? You will find the answers in this article, offered to you by the market research agency IntoTheMinds. Find here episode 1 and here episode 2. We completed this series of articles in 2018 with the creation of an online market research guide that you can access free of charge on our website. For any question, request or quote for market research in Belgium, France or elsewhere, do not hesitate to contact us....
Correcteo transforms a niche market into a business opportunity
The exercise of preparing a final thesis can be a complex task for a student. It is with a view to supporting them that Quentin Demey created Correcteo, a platform that allows students to receive the support they need to develop their thesis. At the time of Correcteo’s international opening, we interviewed its founder to find out more about the future of this promising organisation. Summary Correcteo in a Nutshell Origin of the...
CoCasse vegetable tablets: a surprizing food innovation
It was during our active monitoring of the marketing campaign at SIAL 2018 that we discovered CoCasse, one of the candidates for the SIAL Innovation Awards, which presented a product never before seen: a vegetable concentrate in the form of a tablet. The resemblance to a chocolate bar was so striking that visitors fell for it, some thinking that the squares of vegetable concentrate could be eaten. Back in today’s article on a...
Tediber, the success story of a Digital Native Vertical Brand (DNVB)
Tediber, founded by Julien Sylvain, is a company whose particularity is to sell on the Internet an object whose marketing was until now the exclusive preserve of “permanent” shops: the mattress. A native digital actor, Tediber has just opened a brick-and-mortar store in the Marais district of Paris (13 rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie), a turning point in his strategy as an online “pure player” that...
Homestamp, a blockchain-based mobile application by Immoweb
As part of our marketing and technological surveillance, we are now interested in a mobile application launched by Immoweb, Belgium’s leading platform on the real estate market. This application, called Homestamp, has the particularity of using blockchain technology. The purpose (to validate the inventories online thanks in particular to photos and videos with certified timestamps) seemed to us to be particularly relevant to...
WeMaintain : this startup disrupts the market of elevator maintenance
BFM Académie, the first contest for new business creators on radio and television, is now in its 13th edition and this year, it is Jade Francine, creator of WeMaintain, an elevator maintenance company, who is the winner. Its slogan is “using digital technology to enhance the value of technical professions”. We had the pleasure of interviewing her and learning more about this somewhat revolutionary concept within this...
Le Testeur, a store to conduct market research in real conditions
As part of our marketing and retail monitoring, we have recently interviewed Sabrina Le Bourgeois, Director of communications at SEMAEST, a mixed economy company based in Paris, to learn more about the Le Testeur boutique located at 14 rue du Château d’Eau in the 10th arrondissement, an innovative way to conduct market research in real conditions while minimising the risks involved. Here is what we have learned about this...
Trocotel : how solving customer dissatisfaction leads to new business
The Trocotel website is an interactive platform created by Etienne Merlo and Jérôme Rouvront, both former employees of the Accor group. We went to interview Etienne Merlo to better understand the motivating factors behind the creation of this website. The idea of Trocotel comes from first-hand experience. These two employees were confronted each day with the dissatisfaction of many customers who had booked at an Accor hotel, but who,...
What’s the marketing secret behind Frank Woolworth’s fortune?
The Woolworth building is one of New-York’s most iconic buildings. Not only was it the tallest building of the world from 1913 until 1930, but it also conveys the history of a brand that has revolutionized retail before going bankrupt. How did retail look like at the time of Frank Woolworth ? Frank Woolworth was a legendary businessman but also a legendary inept salesman. His inability as a salesman is told to have led him draft...
Twinkind went bankrupt : another startup in 3D printing has died
A few years ago we discovered in Berlin a very hot startup : Twinkind. They specialized in 3D printed figurines in a quality never seen before. Their process was based was unique as we explained in this interview of its founder Timo Schaedel. Unfortunately Twinkind filled for bankruptcy in June 2016. The press realease (in German) doesn’t give much detail on the reasons of the failure but our guess is that the market was...
Innovation at VRT : Appiness “Spott” keeps growing
Last week I was invited by the innovation division of VRT (Belgium’s Dutch-speaking public television) for their creative circle III. It consisted in a series of presentations and testing from startups incubated in VRT’s “sandbox” department. Presentations and demos were given by 5 startups : Fisheye, Limecraft, Moovly, Appiness, Kiswe. Buy what you see on TV with the Spott mobile app The demo which very much impressed me was given by...
Fatal errors for startups growth
Fellow betacoworker Toon Vanagt made an impression when presenting on startups growth at Techstartup 2016. The least you can say is that Toon as vast experience in the field of startups (check his latest baby data.be) and a solid sense of humor. He was not afraid to tell the audience about his failures and I found one of them especially interesting : Casius.be. Toon explained how he burned 4m€ of VC cash to build a … 1.8m€ business....
Sharing economy : revenues to be taxed in France
The good thing with the sharing economy is that it has empowered individuals to make money. The bad thing is that governments haven’t been able to take much advantage of those new business models. In France the sharing economy represents a turnover of €2.5bn and a workforce estimated to 13000. Needless to say, it was more than enough to get the attention of governments in desperate need of money since the financial crisis has begun in...
Highlights of one more year of blogging
It’s now been 6 years I’ve regularly posted articles on this blog (some 2100 articles in 3 languages). The design and technical changes we made in 2014 and 2015 were fruitful. The audience increases regularly and since we fixed a cache problem this summer, the French version of the blog is hitting almost systematically the 100k unique users mark on annual basis. The Dutch version of the blog is not doing so good ; despite all my...
The paradox of entrepreneurship : whom do you create your startup for?
Why are there so many startups failing in the first 3 to 5 years ? One of the recurrent explanation is that entrepreneurs don’t understand their market well. Some may suffer from the knowledge corridor, and what is sure is that market research may have helped to avoid failure. My point today is a more philosophical one. We’ll all agree that market research can indeed help find the right strategy and marketing approach. But why is it...
A new way to finance the growth of startups : bonds ! (Part 2)
In part 1, Jean Carvajal explained the various types of crowdfunding available to companies seeking financing, including issuing stocks, bonds and taking out conventional loans. In his opinion, bond financing is a great method as it provides funding flexibility and customisable repayment options without diluting shares. He then explained what unique factors Investbook’s risk committee considers when selecting projects for its...
A new way to finance the growth of startups : bonds ! (Part 1)
The topic of financing startups’ growth is a recurrent one on this blog; simply because it’s a problem that many entrepreneurs are faced with and that they don’t always solve. Today we’re interviewing Jean Carvajal, President and Creator of Investbook. Investbook is the first crowdfunding platform approved by the AMF (French regulatory body) for bonds investments. IntoTheMinds : Banks are cautious. This...
TUZZit : 8 great online tools for your startup
Many would-be entrepreneurs we meet strive to either look for or even make up the visual and creative collaborative tools that will ease their team thinking process. This difficulty further increases when those teams are decentralized. Business model canvas, 5 forces of Porter, Important / Urgent matrix … TUZZit offers a collection of visual models to work with creativity online. Initiated by a Belgian startup, TUZZit...
3D printing : the story of the Moimee 3D figurines
3D printing is one of the trends that we follow very carefully. It may be a new revolution and some applications are just amazing. We published a couple of weeks ago a post on the market of 3D printed figurines and visited one of the companies that invested in that segment : Moimee. The technology used by Moimee is pretty much the same as the one used by Twinkind. They use 48 digital cameras to take 48 different views of the subject...
Financing Startups : the emerging role of crowdfunding
We were very pleased to learn that our long beloved startup “Brussels Beer Project” got funded … by a bank! It was –at least for us- a very nice surprise to learn this good news. We were very critical of banks last year: we explained how difficult it was to get a loan, the criteria used by banks to give or refuse a loan, the consequences of this money drain for startups, discussed the role of crowdfunding and we also gave published...
Alain Milliat: interview of a successful entrepreneur
Today we inaugurate a new article format. We wanted to give a voice to people that we hear too little in our opinion: successful entrepreneurs who have managed to master the difficulties of entrepreneurship and have grown their businesses. Besides interviewing experienced entrepreneurs we will also report on individual would-be entrepreneurs who have just started their business. Our guess is that comparing the two viewpoint will prove...
1/3 of hospitality firms could die. So what ?
A press conference was recently organized by the union of independents to denounce the expected negative effects of the black boxes in the so-called Horeca (HOtels – REstaurant – Coffee shops) sector (in other words the sector of hospitality). As a short reminder, these black boxes are devices to be implemented in the cash register of stores to eradicate the possibility to make black money. Jean-François DONDELET, the president of the...
Delta Lloyd : qualitative methods used to reveal business opportunity
After the remarkable marketing campaign “The billable Talk” launched by Delta Lloyd to help independent workers get insured for revenue losses, we come back today with Karlien Kelgtermans, Marketing Communication Project Leader at Delta Lloyd Life, on the development of this project and its first results. IntoTheMinds: There are more than 1m independent workers in Belgium. Yet, only half of them are insured against revenue...
Gumelo lets you grow your own food
We met the entrepreneurial guys of Gumelo, a Portuguese startup in the food sector, at the SIAL 2014 fair in Paris. We just loved what they do and thought it would be good for them to get some exposure beyond the borders of Portugal. Grow mushrooms in your apartment As we explained in a previous article, the concept behind Gumelo is simple : wherever you live, you should be able to grow your own food. Gumelo’s concept stands for...
SIAL 2014 : and the winner of the innovation award is …
You don’t need to present a new drink or a new food product to win the first prize of innovation at SIAL. The innovation is also about everything what revolves about consumers and new ways to consumer food. We already dealt with the nomadic market trend in an earlier article and this year’s innovation prize fits perfectly into this trend. This award rewards an individual who has understood what marketers call the “customers’ pains”...
Produce your own food : the new trend
There is one weak signal that emerged this year at SIAL that we think may be interesting to follow : “grow your own food”. We detected at least 3 products that fall into this category and we’d like to present them to you. Don’t buy : make it on your own The concept behind the “grown your food” trend is simple. You can produce what your eat and it’s not limited to vegetables or fruits. Any basic product you find in the supermarket, any...
Essential business tools for startups : 99€ training in Brussels on 29 November
Would-be entrepreneurs will be delighted : a 1-day training session will be organized on November 29th 2014 in Brussels to teach, refresh, train essential skills to successfully start or develop your venture. If you want to register, just follow this link and fill in the online form. Practical details on the workshops Price : 99€ early bid (if you register before November 15), 199€ otherwise Price includes lunch and coffee Venue :...
What are the main reasons to create a company?
After the post we published 2 weeks ago on why companies fail, another interesting piece of statistics published by the French National Institute for Statistics (INSEE) regards the motivations of people to start their company and how these motivations have evolved since 2006. You’ll find the complete table below (we did the translations ourselves given that those interesting statistics are unfortunately only available in French)....
Future idea ? Coaching videos on market research
Let me reveal you a private part of my life : on Sunday evening I usually iron my shirts while watching videos in streaming. I usually watch French broadcasts like Envoye Special (on France 2) or Capital (on M6). I chose the first one to accompany my ironing session last Sunday and watch the video below. The first part of it is dedicated to a French entrepreneur who became of professional real-estate investor. However he didn’t chose...
Entrepreneurship in Belgium : is the situation really so worrying ?
Recent articles in newspapers pointed the decrease of firm creation in Belgium, especially in the Southern part of the country when the creation rate was said to have decreased 11.2% We downloaded the figures from BeStat, the official repository of statistical figures for Belgium, and the reality looks slightly different. To evaluate the number of new firms, we used as proxy the application for VAT numbers. Contradicting articles :...
