Happy Sunday!
Welcome back to Founders Feature, a weekly newsletter all about the journeys of young startup founders.
For this week's edition, I interviewed Pierre-Loup Dupré, Founder of Maison Dupré Premium, a luxury fashion marketplace based in the US and France.
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Here’s what Maison Dupré Premium is all about:
🏠 The Basics
The Problem:
Replicas of luxury products are getting better and better, and counterfeit luxury products are sold wide and far. Many marketplaces don't do a great job at verifying the authenticity of the products they are selling, but customers should be able to trust in the quality of the product they are buying.
The Solution:
Maison Dupré Premium is a luxury marketplace connecting buyers and sellers. Our job is to guarantee the authenticity of the items sold on our platform and to stop the selling of counterfeit products. We spend great time and effort in verifying the authenticity of our goods.
The Team:
Pierre-Loup is a solo founder and currently a full-time student at Neoma Business School and taking classes at HEC Paris. The team consists of 4 people.
🚀 The Journey
How did you come up with your startup/solution?
I'm very passionate about luxury products, such as sneakers, for many years. I've developed very strong expertise in this field, being able to spot the fake from the real and I've been both on the buyer and seller side of luxury products.
The existing marketplaces for luxury goods were more industrial scale and therefore less able to really guarantee that the product being sold is not a replica. Quality was really the most important part for me, even if this means growing at a slower rate so that our customers can fully trust in the product we are selling them. That's why I created my own luxury marketplace.
Why is this the right time for this problem to be solved?
Luxury is a booming sector, and consumers deserve to receive the value of the product they pay for. This is universally true, but specifically, when so much money is paid for the product, it should really be authentic. In a way, it's a question of fairness.
What is a recent success you are proud of?
Recently I realised that Maison Dupré Premium had reached the stage of working even when I wasn't actively doing anything for it. This was a huge stepping stone for me, knowing that we will keep selling and growing even without my constant direct input. This has also allowed me to take on some other projects in the background and take more of a passive role in Maison Dupré Premium.
What is a recent challenge you have faced?
As a student entrepreneur, I sometimes struggle with the judgment and jealousy I receive from my peers. The pressure can be quite hard, being responsible for other people's money, but this judgment from the outside is almost harder. I like to be able to show off my success and some of my peers aren't very perceptive to this. It's not the typical activity of a 20-year-old.
What do you wish you knew before you started and is there anything you would have done differently in hindsight?
Honestly, not really. I consider myself lucky here, but I feel like I learned the right and relevant things at the right time along the way.
🧠 The Lessons
What is the best advice you have been given recently?
There is nothing better than learning by necessity. If you have to learn something, you will learn so much faster if you really need it for a task at hand. This is why we often forget what we learn in school because we learned it during a time where we had no use for it.
What advice would you give to other young founders?
Never give up, and stand up to pressure. Take the time to fail, and take the risk to lose what you invest. Take the risk of feeling ridiculous. Try everything possible for you, because one day it will pay off.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned so far?
Never listen to the pessimists. We can learn from them, but we should never fully take their advice. It can be quite hard to stand up to them, but it's worth it.
✨ The Inspiration
Who inspires you?
There are three people I can think of here, all are entrepreneurs who started their companies from scratch: Elon Musk, Oussama Ammar, and Jack Ma.
What book do you think everyone should read?
I find that a lot of books on entrepreneurship contain very little for their length. Very often they are filled with clichés. If you want to turn to books, I would recommend reading the biographies of the entrepreneurs you admire.
I swear by Youtube. It is such a great source of knowledge. It can be difficult to find videos with great value, but I have learned so much from Youtube.