carinemamou@yahoo.comDear alumni, 

Our Alumni & Entrepreneurs portrait today is that of an entrepreneurs duo, both graduates of the 2010 IFM MBA class, Quiterie Thomann and Carine Mamou.

They started their Fashion Light Up brand strategy consulting activity almost four years ago. Several years after the IFM how did they decided to start working together ? Did it happened that simply ? What kind of advice might they give to other alumni looking for a business-partner.

We wish to increase the interactions between the IFM Alumni Entrepreneurs and the Global IFM Alumni community and also to stimulate our entrepreneurial spirit.

Quiterie, Carine, before discussing about your company and your projects we would like to know you better. In your career path, who is the designer/creator who has inspired you the most and to whom you can still refer today?

Quiterie: It goes back to the beginning of our history. Within the framework of the GFM, a very special project brought the two of us together: a strategic study on the Anne Valérie Hash Maison (Anne Valérie gradutated from the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale). As part of this systemic analysis of the company, the designer opened the doors of her brand to us, shared with us in complete transparency her strategic challenges and allowed us to exchange with her close collaborators on the internal organization. 

This meeting left a lasting impression on us: Anne Valérie Hash's charisma, the way she managed her brand firmly but with great gentleness were inspiring, a real "iron fist in a velvet glove". The way she trusted us immediately.

Carine: Beyond her management, her style was also very avant-garde. A very feminine universe that borrowed the codes of the masculine. This style hasn't aged a bit, it's still very up-to-date and inspires us even on a daily basis in our professional life. It allows us to make the link between the world of consulting and the world of fashion!

It is also thanks to this project that we were able to experience working together, we found ourselves both aligned and complementary in our thinking. 

Another not that tiny question : Do you have a must have in your wardrobe? A garment you can't part with? 

Quiterie : A light grey cashmere sweater from Monoprix. I've had it for several years and it hasn't moved. It's simple, refined, a timeless piece of wardrobe. Moreover, they had to change manufacturer because they no longer offer this quality.

Carine: for me, good jeans! I can wear them in a casual way as well as in a more sophisticated way by "breaking" the casual side with a beautiful shirt and imposing jewellery. 

Quiterie: Well, it's funny, naturalness comes back at a gallop, we each talk about it with our professional eye, me focusing on the product and you on the story!

Another very day to day question : Imagine that you could only eat one dish, which one would you choose? 

Quiterie: Unanimously, chocolate, in all its forms... Let's say that chocolate is our driving force! When we have a small drop in energy, the chocolate bar is never far away! Dark chocolate, raw for my part and milk chocolate, milder, for Carine.

Thank you, we already have a few keys to your personal sense of fashion  ... We can start with our alphabet questions

Question A - Let's start with the letter A ... And so let's start with the beginning of your story. How was Fashion Light Up born?

Quiterie: Long before the birth of FLU there was our meeting, our paths crossed several times. First, at Printemps, Carine was in marketing and I was at the central buying office, then a few years later at the IFM, during our MBA. 

Each time we worked together, we took great pleasure in working together, it always worked very well. We liked to confront our ideas, to challenge each other. Then, with our IFM diploma in our pockets, we both pursued our respective paths within brands.

For my part, I joined Claudie Pierlot in the Purchasing and Supply Department, then I went on to become a brand manager at André. The difficult times that the Vivarte group went through pushed me to take a new career path. I decided to take advantage of my 20 years of experience in retail in a different way.

However, I wasn't completely at ease  by the idea of becoming an entrepreneur. I didn't really have the "entrepreneurial spirit". Initially, I was looking to invest in a project. That's when I met the founders of Le Closet, a subscription-based ready-to-wear rental service for the Millenials. We fell in love with each other, but in the end, the association didn't come together. However, they offered me the opportunity to accompany them on a strategic purchasing mission. That's how I got my foot in the door and created Fashion Light Up.

Carine: for my part, after the IFM and a stint at Princesse tam.tam, I was quickly caught up by my desire to work as a consultant . I like the idea of being able to move from one project to another, to work for several brands, to learn from the best practices of a sector and to transpose them elsewhere. 

I also find that this outside view of the issues is very interesting, it allows you to gain height and to see things differently than when you have your nose in the handlebars. 

I first created a communication agency. Then, we met again with Quiterie and exchanged on our respective activities. We realized that there were real synergies between our activities and decided to work together to offer brands a global offer and operational support throughout the value chain.

Question D for Duo : You created FLU en Duo, for what reason? What advice would you give to a student who is attracted to entrepreneurship? 

Carine: it's a real asset to work as a duo for us as well as for the client. Our two different areas of expertise allow us to bring a cross view to any and to go further in our recommendations.

Quiterie: the most important thing, when you want to start a new business, is to have a common vision and expectations aligned on how to implement projects.

What works well in our duo is having a deep mutual respect and sharing the same values from both a personal and professional point of view.

Carine and I are different, but we are complementary and we share the same desire to succeed together.

Question E for Teaching : What makes a good consultant? 

A consultant must know how to work on 3 steps: question the past to understand and analyze, set up recommendations and an action plan in the present while having an eye in the future in order to project scenarios. 

The first quality of a consultant is organization! No two days are the same. One day at the client's place to carry out a consulting mission, another at the office to do administrative work and often lunches or more formal meetings for prospecting and sales. So you have to be multi-tasked.

You also have to have a strong heart, because it's an "up and down" job. There is a time for missions and periods of "inter-missions" to be managed and optimized. With time, you learn to take advantage of these quieter moments to prospect, communicate, lead a webinar...

It is typically during these quiet days  that we have more time to interact with our communities, including the IFM Alumni.  We share with the IFM Alumni the same expectation for high standards and efficiency and of course  a passion for Fashion, for innovation and foresight researches.

Meeting our peers, our e-MBA colleagues, catching up on their projects and the issues they are working on is infinitely precious to renew our approaches.

When we are in charge of a demanding project, we can trust on our network, on expert skills that are complementary to our own. Cultivating these strong links with our network is both humanly important and professionally crucial in order to fully understand each person's expertise and to ensure that each added value are integrated at the right time on the right subject. 

To support us on other missions, we can also for look for  extra ressources in terms of collection analysis or data exploitation.

Question Y 

Fashion Light Up, tomorrow, what will it look like? 5-10-15 years old

Our market expertise and our two "senior" profiles enable us to manage a wide range of assignments. Our clients today are brands with sales of up to €15-20 million. We also work with more established brands, but in this case we work in collaboration with consulting firms or investment funds. In the future, we would like to support these brands directly.

Question Z 

That's the last question, if you could change anything currently outside your scope to help your business grow, what would you want to change?

To be able to meet our ambition, we would like to be able to change the habits of these established brands that have historically worked with major strategy consulting firms.

In the fashion, beauty and home sector, it seems more appropriate to us to be accompanied by consultants who are capable of implementing a strategy and who then know how to apply it in a very operational way.

This is the reason why these same consulting firms form teams with us: they need sector expertise and consultants who know how to speak the same language as the client. This is our case, we are former operational and business unit managers, we know the market constraints, the schedules, the rhythms of the collections...

Contact : 

Carine Mamou et Quitterie Thomann

Fashion Light Up

contact@fashionlightup.com