Maud Sarda (EDHEC 2005) and Label Emmaüs for the EDHEC Socially Responsible Entrepreneur of the Year award

Candidate for the EDHEC Socially Responsible Entrepreneur of the Year award 

Maud graduated from EDHEC in 2005 and went on to work in consulting for a few years with Accenture before joining Emmaüs France in 2010. She developed a real fondness for this highly engaged movement, which reaches out to the most excluded members of society and endeavours to give them an active role as citizens on a daily basis. In 2016, she founded Label Emmaüs, an online social aid boutique with a catalogue made up of second-hand products donated by the public and restored by the Emmaüs team.

label-emmaus.co represented a gamble which, if successful, would allow Emmaüs to establish its own presence and promote its own values in the world of e-commerce. The mission of this counter model – up against conventional commercial websites – is to train people facing exclusion in the business of e-commerce and to guarantee buyers that their transaction is socially responsible. It has cooperative status with a governance structure that is divided across all stakeholders (employees, sellers, buyers, partners, etc.).

The website currently has 220,000 items for sale (home furnishings, furniture, clothing, accessories, books, etc.), and 9 out of 10 clients would recommend it to their friends and family. More than 150 people have received training in visually framing the products for sale, reference listing, stock management and preparing orders, all key skills for business in the future. Label Emmaüs hopes gradually to integrate the 350 Emmaüs points of sale onto the platform, and more broadly to include all stakeholders from the social and solidarity economy with a view to becoming France’s first solidarity marketplace!

To find out more: label-emmaus.co