Vestiaire Collective: New management, returning to growth, AI and a culture of 'delivery'

Four months after their appointment, Thomas Hézard, chief product officer, and Rémi Bouchez, chief technology officer, met with FashionUnited to detail the initial changes made at Vestiaire Collective.

Fewer projects running in parallel; more decisions left to the teams; targeted use of artificial intelligence; and lower fees. Behind these measures, a new way of deciding, developing and growing the French unicorn is taking shape. The objective is now clearly stated: to return to double-digit growth.

The first leads product, the second tech. Behind the decisions on AI, app design or user experience, the two executives carry another message: Vestiaire Collective is changing its pace. A new chapter has begun with significant fanfare, and its repercussions could permanently reshape the future of Vestiaire Collective.

Last spring, the French second-hand fashion platform saw the departure of its historic co-founder, Fanny Moizant. An emblematic figure of French Tech, she had helped make Vestiaire Collective the first French unicorn founded by women in 2021. Her departure marks a new cycle for the company.

After years of expansion, followed by a focus on returning to profitability, Vestiaire Collective is entering a different phase: scaling up. This is a classic moment in the life of a mature technology company. The organisation must now absorb its own growth with more processes, without losing the ability to make quick decisions.

It is precisely in this area that the new management intends to act.

An investment banker's eye

To steer this new phase, Vestiaire Collective is relying on Bernard Osta. Having worked at Lazard in New York, then Goldman Sachs and Vivendi, the new CEO is already familiar with the company. He previously held the position of chief strategy officer at Vestiaire Collective.

Rather than overhauling the organisation and bringing in a new management team, he chose to promote two profiles from within the company's ranks.

Hézard, former chief strategy and people officer and previously at BCG, now heads up product. Alongside him, Bouchez, an engineer by training who joined Vestiaire Collective seven years ago, becomes chief technology officer after gradually rising through the technical organisation's ranks.

This is a duo of insiders, but more importantly, two executives who are already familiar with the teams, products and workings of the platform.

The choice is telling. It is not about starting from a blank slate, but about making an existing organisation function differently.

Four months after they took up their posts, FashionUnited met with them. Throughout the interview, one word came up repeatedly: speed.

This is not just about the speed of coding or developing a new feature. It is about the speed of the organisation itself. The time it takes to make a decision, move from an idea to a product, test a hypothesis and, if it works, deploy it on a large scale.

This is likely at the heart of Vestiaire Collective's new project.

Speed as the company's new engine

According to Hézard, the diagnosis upon their arrival was blunt. “We were too slow until now.” This slowness did not just concern technical development, but more broadly the way decisions were made.

Even before launching new features, the two executives began by reviewing their working methods. “We have defined a three-year strategy, which we have broken down into a 12-month operational plan. We then empowered the teams to make their own decisions, especially those that are easily reversible,” he explains. The goal is to eliminate the approvals that slow down innovation.

At the same time, Vestiaire Collective is drastically reducing the number of projects running simultaneously. “We have halved the number of initiatives the teams were working on. This really allows us to speed up delivery. Today, we have also halved the time it takes to release a new feature,” continues Bouchez.

This approach contrasts with that of many companies during a change of leadership, where new teams often start by restructuring the organisation. At Vestiaire Collective, the choice is the opposite.

Why team stability has become a performance lever

To our great surprise, the duo's first emergency measure was... to change almost nothing. “We didn't want to completely change the organisation. Our diagnosis was that we needed to speed up the deployment of new features. We couldn't disrupt the teams and ask them to go faster at the same time.”

The choice may be surprising, especially for a company emerging from several years of financial consolidation and now seeking to return to double-digit growth. Where one might have expected a new rationalisation of resources or massive team changes, Vestiaire Collective is betting on continuity first.

This stability is surprising at first glance. It can be explained, however. Hézard brings with him several years of experience leading the group's human resources. This experience directly informs his vision of transformation, guided by the idea that internal stability serves the speed of execution.

“The engineers keep their managers and stay within their areas of expertise. This is something Rémi and I strongly believe in. It helps to build trust within the teams.”

The tone is set. After several years dedicated to reaching financial break-even, a period often synonymous with cost control, constant prioritisation and organisational tensions in tech companies, Vestiaire Collective seems to favour continuity over disruption.

In a sector where tech profiles are in high demand, retaining talent is as key as recruiting new engineers. Managerial stability thus emerges as a factor for engagement as much as a lever for execution.

A company learning to delegate

This new culture also translates into a 180-degree shift in decision-making. “Four months ago, I spent my days making decisions,” recounts Hézard.

Today, the situation is completely different. “I make one or two important decisions a week. Everything else is decided directly by the teams, who simply inform us.” This shift is crucial. For a long time, many scale-ups operated on a highly centralised model, where every decision gradually made its way up to a few executives. This was an effective system in the early years, but it quickly becomes a hindrance as organisations grow.

At Vestiaire Collective, this evolution is primarily a response to feedback from the employees themselves. “The teams told us: ‘We are always waiting for you to make the decisions.’ So we chose to operate differently.”

This autonomy should also allow teams to take more risks. By reducing the number of approvals and bringing decision-making closer to those leading the projects, Vestiaire Collective aims to create a framework where it is possible to test faster, even at the risk of making mistakes.

This empowerment is undoubtedly one of the most significant cultural changes made in recent months.

Artificial intelligence in the service of simplicity

This new organisation is already reflected in the products. One of the first projects concerns the item listing experience, the entry point for any marketplace.

The objective is ambitious: to reduce the time it takes to list a product for sale from five minutes to one minute. To achieve this, Vestiaire Collective is gradually rolling out a new tool called Smart Listing. From a single photograph, artificial intelligence automatically identifies the brand, material, colour and model of the product and generates an initial description.

“We are still in the beta phase, but the initial results are very promising,” explains Hézard. The goal here goes beyond simply saving time. By automating essential information, Vestiaire also improves the quality of listings, limits errors and enriches the data available to buyers.

For the executives, the purpose of artificial intelligence is therefore to remove the friction that slows down transactions.

Power of a better photograph

Another less spectacular but already measurable project is the quality of the visuals. “The first thing buyers see on Vestiaire are the photos. However, they are taken by individuals and their quality is very variable.”

The teams have therefore integrated a system capable of automatically improving images while maintaining perfect fidelity to the product. “We rework the background removal, lighting and shadows, without ever altering the actual condition of the product. There is obviously no question of making a defect disappear,” details Bouchez.

Initial tests show an immediate impact. “We are seeing an increase of more than 5 percent in the liquidity of products whose photos have been improved.” For a marketplace, where each conversion point represents several thousand additional transactions, such a gain is far from marginal.

Facing ChatGPT, learning before investing

Artificial intelligence is also transforming customer acquisition methods. As ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude become new entry points to commerce platforms, Vestiaire Collective prefers to proceed with caution. “We are convinced that this will become an important acquisition channel in the future,” explains Hézard. However, the volumes remain marginal today.

“We are primarily in a learning phase. We are currently developing an application for ChatGPT to understand how users interact with this new environment.”

Bouchez nevertheless believes that the disruption is real. “The fundamentals of SEO remain important, but large language models also change the way a brand is perceived. A company's promises, elements of trust or specific features become much more visible.”

This is a pragmatic approach, true to the philosophy displayed by the two executives: test quickly, measure, then invest.

A return to offensive growth

This acceleration comes in a new context for Vestiaire Collective. For the first time in several years, the company is sustainably profitable. “We have been profitable for several months,” recalls Bouchez. This milestone profoundly changes priorities. “Our goal now is to return to strong, double-digit growth.”

The return to growth is based on several levers. Vestiaire Collective recently lowered the fees charged to buyers to streamline transactions. “We noticed that a significant portion of users were adding products to their favourites without completing their purchase. Since this fee reduction, we have seen a significant improvement in conversion.”

Other investments are expected to follow. The teams are working to further simplify the listing of items to increase the daily volume of new ads. Meanwhile, marketing expenses, which were significantly reduced in recent years, are gradually starting to increase again. “We consider ourselves much more on the offensive today than in the past,” summarises Hézard.

A new phase for the French unicorn

According to the two executives, Vestiaire Collective is not trying to reinvent its model. The platform remains true to its DNA of trust, authenticity, selection and expertise.

However, it is profoundly changing its way of executing. In four months, the new management teams have neither launched a new organisational structure nor announced a major strategic break. They have chosen a more moderate, but perhaps more decisive, path: reducing the number of projects, speeding up decisions, empowering teams and putting execution back at the heart of performance.

At Vestiaire Collective, scaling up will not come from a change in narrative.

It comes, first and foremost, from a change of pace.