Yann Battard (EDHEC Master 1993) from a career in the media to innovation in perfumery

Yann Battard (EDHEC Master 1993) developed his career in the media just as the digital sector was emerging. His appetite for new technology and innovation opened up doors in some of the world’s biggest firms. He took his vision into the world of entrepreneurship and is now CEO of Made By Me.

Yann, who also serves as a mentor for the EDHEC Entrepreneurs Incubator, tells us about his career and the challenges facing Made By Me with today’s customer expectations on the luxury and perfume markets.

Tell us about your career after leaving EDHEC

After EDHEC, I started to acquire experience particularly in the digital sector, media and new technology. I very quickly took an interest in online advertising just as it began to emerge. My knowledge in that area opened up an opportunity for me at TF1, where I was given the task of overseeing all of the channel’s digital marketing. I spent around 10 years in digital, working on brands, audiences and varied content, including TF1, LCI, Star Academy and World Cups on Eurosport. I then took over as managing director of online activities at NRJ, where the challenges included radio broadcasting on the web and via mobile apps as well as positioning the brand on the early social media and creating strong communities on Facebook.

And it was with that experience in media, digital and other new technologies that you then turned to the world of entrepreneurship? 

Yes, I teamed up with an associate to launch our first start-up, Mediabong. Originally it was an online marketplace for videos. We quickly reoriented our business more towards advertising aspects: enhancing advertising performance of videos online, making sure the right video was getting to the right audience. Those were very intense years, developing the business in the US, with several fundraising campaigns as well as many ups and downs in terms of success. We were experimenting with new technologies: artificial intelligence, big data, anything that could generate value, allow us to better understand the consumer and optimise the performance of those videos. 

After seven years, I decided to join Made By Me, a project developed by my partner, who has spent most of her career with major cosmetics firms. She had an idea, an innovation in the world of cosmetics, and was looking for both entrepreneurial and digital skills to help her develop it.

Tell us how that innovation first came about

Made By Me is an innovative perfume brand that is revolutionising the way we wear perfume. With perfumes in compact creams, it offers customers the possibility to create their own perfume by combining different aromas. The whole thing is presented as make-up with different palettes and a modern, colourful design. 

Like many innovations, we really started out in pure R&D, involving teams working for more than two years to come up with a result. We had no idea if we would ever get there. We now have a perfume formula in the form of compact creams that can last as long and are as concentrated as a traditional perfume, something that doesn’t exist yet on the market. Solid perfumes have been around since the dawn of time, since the Egyptians, who used to make them with wax or butter. But those materials are quite greasy and sticky, which limits their capacity to diffuse odours. Our innovation doesn’t have the same disadvantages. 

What expertise and experience do you draw on to develop this new brand? 

Innovating is also about managing professions that require a great amount of expertise and are constantly developing. You can’t find people on the recruitment market who know how to do jobs that are only being invented. That means you have to find and form teams and motivate them with profiles that are quite rare and highly sought after, and you then have to allow them to grow within the structure.

For everything to do with development, I naturally draw on my entrepreneurial experience: structuring companies, setting up our subsidiary in Korea, as well as expertise in financing and fundraising, building business plans, etc.

And the other form of expertise is of course in digital technology, i.e. creating websites, digital communication, analysing digital data, customer acquisition and all those wonderful areas, some of which are subjects I teach at EDHEC.

Was Made by Me a response to demand you sensed on the market or does it reflect a desire to shake up the sector? 

Both! First of all, it is a market in which consumer expectations have changed. If you look at millennials or generation Z, these are people more interested in expressing themselves through a perfume rather than simply adopting an existing brand with its image and values. They are also generations looking for environmentally responsible brands. We have strong environmental convictions and have done a great amount of work to offer a perfume that is fully recyclable with zero plastics. We have also banned a certain number of ingredients from our perfume formulas, even though they are currently authorised but are suspicious and the subject of debate. We are also excited at the prospect of “writing the new chapter in luxury”, one that is both environmentally responsible and indulgent. We don’t have the kind of mindset you find behind a black lacquer case with the word Chanel on it. We propose more colourful and more vivacious products, firmly rooted in today’s environmental mindset.

What are the challenges and objectives for Made By Me?

We hold dear the ambition of allowing people to express their personality, to become their own perfume makers but in a way that hugely simplifies the experience. That’s what reflects all of the difficulty and talent of the team of fragrance designers who have worked on these perfumes: making sure that, however you combine them, you can’t mess it up. It’s a bit like a make-up palette for professional make-up artists, it’s designed so that everything goes well together. These are perfumes that you can use on their own or combined with others, and it will always work. Inherent in this is the idea of democratising something but which continues to be a luxury product, because we have made no concessions on the quality and concentration of our perfumes.

Would you say this is a return to the very essence of luxury: having something unique?

Of course, I don’t think luxury is about being associated with a world that is imposed by a brand, on the contrary, it’s about empowerment. You can express your unique nature through a wonderful olfactory experience, and that’s what we are offering. It’s a trend that is developing in Asia, which is why much of our work and development is oriented towards that region (we started in Korea). Female consumers of luxury products in Asia have certain expectations as they’re a bit fed up of the big traditional brands and iconic French brands. They’re looking for something else that will allow them to assert their personality more.  

What are your goals and ambitions with this brand?

First and foremost to bring it to life! We decided to opt for online distribution, through our e-commerce website. We want to be in contact with our community, to develop a community of customers, but also makers, people who will appropriate the perfume and develop their own recipes. Naturally, on the website you can find recipes to get started customising your own perfume, but what we want to see – our ambition – is that when someone says to you, “wow you smell great, what is it?”, you’ll be able to say, “it’s my own Made By Me perfume, made by Caroline”. We want the community to share their recipes and develop their expertise.

We aim to be market leaders in this new luxury segment – environmentally responsible luxury – and if someday we could enjoy the success of someone like Glossier, which started out on the web building on its community and cosmetic expertise, that would be a fine achievement (ndlr: Glossier is a cosmetics brand that has enjoyed astonishing success, driven by a highly involved digital community).

More information :

- Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/madebymeperfumes/

- testimonies : https://madebymeperfumes.com/fr/zoom-sur/ce-quon-dit-de-nous/