The Patronnes Movement

A new idea of trade

In 2024, committed online brands gathered. It was urgent to escape the red ocean of full online, prohibitive acquisition costs, or wholesale distributors who take 50% margin and often prefer to source from the other side of the world.

✨ The physical retail sector being dominated by large traditional brands, it was necessary to create an alternative model of physical retail that was more accessible, more human, more efficient, and above all fairer in terms of price distribution.

This is how the collective of Patronnes was born: girl bosses, committed online brands and artisans who created a cooperative boutique concept based on a new model: collaborative and phygital micro-commerce.

✅ A network of well-located spaces managed by the collective like a co-living space.

✅ Each brand sells directly to the consumer. No intermediaries. To the great delight of the consumer who finds meaning in their purchases.

✅ Brands collaborate with each other. They are not behind a smoke screen. And everything is done to help the Patronnes persevere.

A concept reinvented and boosted by tech

Created by committed digital brands and technophiles, the concept could not be based on the moribund model of traditional "dad-style" physical retail.

Something more in line with today's consumer expectations was needed: digital, meaning, commitment, human, community, choice...

Everything has been rethought from top to bottom: inverted economic model, no intermediaries, better valued product, more choice, Max explains it all with a fruit salad 🍍 (yes, really):

The urgency and the threat

For the patronnes, the urgency is to be able to develop to face the low-end alternatives coming from the other side of the world that are flooding the market.

Physical retail (wholesale) is a very powerful old lady (24 times more powerful than e-commerce) but very slow and often (very) behind on new technological uses. Moreover, the old lady is not always very "accommodating" with local and committed brands. Business is business.

So what's left to grow IRL?

Open your own store? Too risky. Only the strongest brands do it. More and more are doing it, but it remains very marginal compared to all the brands that exist.

Result: consumers want committed brands but most of them will never find them because they are not IRL.

Hence the urgency to act. To group together. To help each other to help brands get closer to you. In your city.

"Place des Patronnes was created by and for those who want to consume less, but better. For today's generations... and especially so that tomorrow's generations do the same."

When the concept becomes a movement

1 year after launching the collective, the action has become a reality. A first point of sale has opened in one of the best locations in Lille. Everyone in Lille is talking about it!

The collective has grown. +200 brands and creators have become Patronnes.

Opening projects are multiplying. Everything becomes possible together because together we are stronger!

Whatever one may think, and even if it can sometimes bother the old lady, the Patronnes are no longer just a simple collective. They have become a movement. A future...