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Opublikowano: niedziela, 15, lipiec 2018 06:38
Amorelie: A Successful Adult E-Commerce Bought By Media Giant ProsiebenSat1
The Berlin-based company Amorelie has been owned by the Prosieben Group for almost three months now. A small remaining share in the online sex toy retailer is still owned by the founders headed by Lea-Sophie Cramer. How was the start-up able to stir up the market and attract the interest of the Bavarian media giant?
Amorelie has long been one of the largest adult retailers in Europe: the company has 20,000 products on offer, a foothold in the stationary trade through its cooperation with the drugstore discounter DM and a strong market presence in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and France. Sales have grown rapidly in recent years from €36 million in 2016 to €56 million in 2017, and the company expects double-digit growth rates again this year. Commercials for Amorelie run on daytime television, and the ProsiebenSat1 Media group, which emerged from the demise of the media empire of Leo Kirch, has used its investment arm Nucom Group to increase its initial stake in Amorelie to nearly full ownership.
Amorelie was launched in 2012. Its founders are Lea-Sophie Cramer, who previously worked for Groupon, and Sebastian Pollock, who acquired his work experience at the San Francisco-based venture capital firm BV Capital.
From the very beginning the strategy of the two founders was to position Amorelie as a chic lifestyle label and to avoid any reference to traditional sex shops in the dark corners of the city and thus to seek the public with a proactive and hip approach. Cramer commented on the formative years: »The general public was still going crazy for erotic novels like 50 Shades of Grey. I thought if it’s possible for erotic novels to be read openly on the train, why shouldn’t it be okay to buy love toys?«
While numerous manufacturers made their way into the mainstream, traditional retailers such as Beate Uhse and Orion struggled with digitization and the increasing shifts in the industry towards lifestyle and branding.
Cramer also created an impeccable online shopping experience. Few competitors such as the German Eis.de or the British retailer Lovehoney, recently acquired by the Jacobs family, were able to to do that and achieve record growth curves similar to Amorelie.