And the nominees for the EDHEC Entrepreneur award are...

The award
The Entrepreneur of the Year prize is awarded to an Edhec entrepreneur who has decided to take a leap into the unknown and has contributed to EDHEC’s image as a creator of talent by their taste for risk and adventure. Their daring and sense of innovation will have impacted on the winner’s sector or region, or on the vision others have of the sector.
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The nominees
Marie Soudré-Richard (GE 1997)
Founder and CEO of Little Fashion Gallery

In 2006, Marie Soudré-Richard created the Little Fashion Gallery, the first online concept store bringing together more than two hundred fashionable children’s clothing, decoration, book and toy sellers. The Little Fashion Gallery, more than just a site, is also a brand of its own. In 2008, as it turns out, it spun off a magazine, the Little Fashion Book, with a print run of 25 000.
Since 2012, the brand has been working on a change to its business model, launching, under the name Little Fashion Gallery, its own line of children’s clothes. This line is closely associated with the characteristics—cool, fashionable and international—associated with the brand itself.
The Little Fashion Gallery is open in seventy-three countries; international sales account for half of its turnover. An appearance on Canal+’s Édition Spéciale and countless mentions in fashion magazines have done much to publicise the small firm’s name and contribute to its image.

More information: www.littlefashiongallery.com

Jean-Baptiste Duquesne (GE 1994)
Founder and CEO—Confidentielles Group / 750 grammes

Jean-Baptiste Duquesne (GE 1994), at the helm of a media group made up of seven sites specialising in cuisine and subjects of interest to women (750 grammes, confidentielles, tribugourmande, and others),  now manages twenty-five employees.
Everything began in 2004, with the creation of 750 grammes, now, with 12 million visits a month, the second most popular cooking site in France. After creating a smartphone application and a YouTube channel (two million monthly views), Jean-Baptiste Duquesne inaugurated a cooking workshop in Paris in 2013, as well as a magazine version of his popular cooking website.
His goal? To make Confidentielles a top group of women’s websites in France and number one in internet cuisine websites the world over, by relying on a technological savoir-faire available nowhere else in the market.
Jean-Baptiste is also an EDHEC Alumni Business and Technologies Club ambassador.

More information: www.confidentielles.com

Laurent Schwartz (GE 2005)
Founding partner - Gold.fr

On his graduation from EDHEC in 2005, Laurent Schwartz began working at Ernst & Young and three years later founded the internet site Gold.fr. The site quickly became a leading platform for investment in gold and the purchase of precious metals (gold, silver, platinum, palladium). The swift rise of gold.fr., allied with the forty years’ experience of the Comptoir de l’Or (a family firm), has facilitated the growth of the top French network for trade in precious metals.
On the strength of the success of Gold.fr., Laurent Schwartz created a network of sixty-five agencies all over France. The site offers online quotations, price histories, charts and tables, and articles and videos. It also facilitates online transactions, and in 2011 it launched a smartphone application to offer mobile access to these services.
Four hundred thousand unique visitors a month, growth of 50 percent between 2011 and 2012 and annual receipts amounting to €64 million—Laurent Schwartz is thus responsible for the creation of fifteen jobs and now aspires to expand Gold.fr.’s reach abroad.

More information : www.gold.fr