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LAPLAINE: A unique French luxury brand committed to sustainability

SKEMA alumna Marie Veyron is the founder of LAPLAINE, a startup that embodies French craftsmanship. Through its commitment to handmade luxury products sustainably sourced from ostriches, the brand defends and preserves a precious local heritage of knowledge and techniques. In this article, she narrates her adventurous entrepreneurial journey.

Name: Marie Veyron

Graduation year: 2019

Master/program specialization: MSc Luxury and Fashion Management

Company name: LAPLAINE

Position: Founder and CEO

Location of business: France

Website: www.laplaine.co

Ulule campaign: https://www.ulule.com/laplaineco/

Quote: When I think about it, the journey to end up where I am today seems quite long, as I started at a time when no one knows what will happen next with COVID-19. However, it made me realized that nothing is impossible and taught me how to move forward when things do not go as planned…!

Marie Veyron-LAPLAINE

Growing up at our family farm, I had the unique opportunity to be around different animals on a daily basis. As unique as it can be, ostriches were one of them.

Years later, driven by my passion for the French savoir-faire and the leatherwork, I understood how materials from ostriches could be used and enhanced in a sustainable way.

To take this idea further, I joined SKEMA’s MSc programme in luxury and fashion management. This programme was an obvious choice for me and it helped me to learn more about how to communicate on my brand and products. I also took advantage of doing several internships. That is how I ended up working in the communication, marketing, and even the production team for different luxury companies in the leather goods industry.

Laplaine products

During the last year of my master’s programme, I joined SKEMA Ventures to fine-tune my project. Thanks to events like the Bootcamp workshop, for instance, I progressed on different aspects of my idea way faster than if I were alone. The cherry on top was winning the SKEMA Ventures Awards, which helped me to invest in my first prototypes!

Finally, after the end of my study internship, I decided to make my project a reality and filed for my company’s registration in January 2020.

After several months of searching how to express fresh and original products while maintaining the aspect of sustainability and local production at the highest level, I am very happy to share with you today the official launch of LAPLAINE!

All of our products are produced from a unique combination of materials that are recycled from our family farm: ostrich leather and eggshells. Made in France, our articles are completely traceable as we also work only with French suppliers.

The brand started with a limited collection that can be found on the crowdfunding platform Ulule. For thirty days (October 19 to November 18), you can discover our Haute Maroquinerie House and pre-order articles from this collection. If we achieve a successful campaign, we want to start our own creative workshop that would enable us to place the French hand-crafted know-how in the heart of our house and to master the complete manufacturing process. When that time comes, we will focus on more significant products like handbags or even home decoration pieces as we can do pretty much everything with the eggshell mosaic.

When I think about it, the journey to end up where I am today seems quite long, as I started at a time when no one knows what will happen next with COVID-19. However, it made me realized that nothing is impossible and taught me how to move forward when things do not go as planned or when you start from scratch on something you have never done before!

SKEMA Ventures

SKEMA Ventures is a business unit created by SKEMA Business School dedicated to impact entrepreneurship and innovation. Through a unique value chain, that encompasses teaching, coaching, incubation, and acceleration, SKEMA Ventures allows each SKEMA student and alumni to think, design, test and launch an impactful entrepreneurial project in a global context, on six innovative territories on four continents, benefiting from the best of each local ecosystem. With SKEMA Ventures, GloCal impact entrepreneurship is born! Watch this video to know more

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