PayLead: A new wave of loyalty in the world of banking
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
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…
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…
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?…
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…
The secrets of conducting market research or how to ensure the success of your (future) business: Part 3
[caption id="attachment_41934" align="alignright" width="400"] The cover of our white paper about the methodology behind market research. This guide can be downloaded free of charge here.[/caption] How to do market research? You will find the answers in this article, offered to…
Correcteo transforms a niche market into a business opportunity
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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 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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Impossible to manage an HORECA profitably in Belgium ? Not true!
In a recent interview Diane Delen, president of the FedCaf (Federation of Coffee Shops and bars), complained about tax rates, monitored cash registers mandatory as from January 2015, too high employer’s contributions. Il all makes it impossible for an entrepreneur…
Uber banned, AirBNB in troubles. What’s the future of the sharing economy?
It seems that lobbies are wining some battles against newcomers in mature industries : UberPOP was banned from several countries or cities in the last months (Belgium, France, Italy, Germany) and we were wondering in a previous post whether AirBNB…
Greatest 3D printing quality on earth? Interview of TwinKind’s founder
We litteraly fell in love with TwinKind, a 3D printing startup located in Berlin that we visited in April. After the teasers of last week, here comes the time to go more in depth with an interview of Timo Schaedel,…
Financing SME’s: the advices of Patrick Hannedouche
Today we’ll be talking with Patrick Hannedouche who runs Business Angel France, a website dealing with startup financing and growth. Patrick has a very direct writing style which helped him attract a strong online audience. We interviewed Patrick about his…
Interview of Dirk Steiger, a CFO who became baker and entrepreneur
One of the cool and well-known shops of Berlin is Zeit Für Brot, an organic bakery located near Alexanderplatz. We went there and loved the place, its atmosphere, its design and of course its products. We are pleased to publish…
3D printing: interview of Le Fabshop’s founder
In a previous post we dealt with the superb initiative of Le Fabshop to install a 3D printing popup sture in the middle of Paris, at the BHV Le Marais. We wanted to know more about the entrepreneur behind Le…
This video will show you that you lack observation skills
Usually I’m not a big fan of videos “making the buzz” on YouTube (not to say that I actually hate the mere expression “to make the buzz”). This being said I was recently deeply interested (and touched) by one of…
What does it cost to be a franchisee ?
The questions and myths around franchising are very present in the heads of entrepreneurs. Would-be entrepreneurs dream of creating a brand with the potential of launching a franchise, while others are interested in becoming franchisees. The question of the costs…
Lessons learned from launching a creative leisure store in Brussels
After we announced in a previous post that Myriam and Nathalie opened their store in Brussels, we interviewed them to give you a more thorough overview of their entrepreneurial venture, what they learned out of it, and which advices they’d…
Interview : trials and tribulations of an entrepreneur in the food sector
Steve Gravy started Ethnik, a quality food-over-the-counter shop, near the European Commission in Brussels a few month ago. He was accompanied by IntoTheMinds for the realization of his project. We come back with him today on his project, its joys…
Crowdsourcing: three examples of concrete results
On his blog Yann Gourvennec, with whom we share ideas and exchange posts regularly, has just published an excellent article about the actual goals of crowdsourcing. Yann has rightly focused its effort to synthesize the concrete results reached through crowdsourcing.…
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