Winners of the LVMH Innovation Award at Viva Tech: Sustainability, AI, Web3
The LVMH Innovation Award ceremony, the technological version of the LVMH prize, took place today at the Viva Technology fair in Paris.
The award acts as a channel to create and accelerate collaboration between LVMH Maisons and promising startups. Divided into six categories, one winner is selected from each with an overall winner receiving the grand prize. This year there was an additional special prize for the class’s hot topic, artificial intelligence.
The main prize was awarded to Save Your Wardrobe, a technologically enabled clothing and repair platform which also won the Omnichanel & Retail category. It supports companies in the way they offer care and repair services, making the experience as easy and luxury-focused as the purchase itself, says founder and CEO Hasna Kourda.
The platform has integrated automated logistics, operational management, fluid customer communication and live data reporting and can be integrated omnichannel: in store, online or with the brand’s existing CRM. The platform is able to bring in all in-house service providers or leverage a network of approved garment care specialists around the world.
According to Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of the LVMH group, the company perfectly illustrates the group’s ambition in creative circularity. This is proven by the LVMH maison, Rimowa’s recently announced Re-Crafted service where the house refurbishes used Rimowa aluminum luggage, guaranteeing the service with a two-year warranty.
Arnault added that successful startups share many characteristics with the LVMH Group as a whole, citing innovation and creativity, quality of execution, entrepreneurial spirit and commitment via diversity, fairness and a concern for the environment.
“LVMH was a startup a few years ago,” he joked, continuing that the group still maintains a startup ethos because of its family spirit: “The group is controlled by my family, but every employee is also part of the family.”
The AI award went to Chat Labs, which creates hyper-personal and highly converting social commerce experiences with storytelling at its heart. It uses AI to optimize conversion rates from social engagement. Currently working in the APAC region where brands use integrated social platform WeChat, the goal is now to explore how the technology can be deployed for the more fragmented Western system, says SVP Sales and Marketing Michel Tjoeng.
In addition to winning the Immersive Digital Experiences category, Web3 CRM platform Absolute Labs was also notably a player in Louis Vuitton’s recent Treasure Trunks NFT project.
Absolute Labs has created the first blockchain analytics and Web3 marketing automation platform. It helps brands drive non-actionable token pricing strategies based on relevant blockchain analytics, plus by identifying market trends and conducting relevant customer segmentations, it enables the automation of marketing campaigns to those customers via their wallets.
CEO and founder Samir Addamine likens his product to a Web3 version of Salesforce — working with wallets as opposed to cookie data and emails. “It’s about the experience and creating deeper relationships. Web3 wallets give you that. They are the future of marketing, he said.
Elsewhere, AI-powered talent management solution Neobrain won the Employee Experience & D&I category; Woola, which helps companies replace plastic with sheep wool waste products, won the Sustainability & Green Tech category. The image and media for brand desirability award went to Vid Mob, which uses AI to analyze and improve ad performance, while Living Packets, which creates a reusable, secure and connected packaging experience, won the Operations Excellence category.
While the overall winner will have a chance to benefit from personal support for a full year at La Maison des Startups, LVMH’s business acceleration program at Station F in Paris, all finalists are invited to join the group’s innovation incubator, where they will receive mentoring. to help them develop their offer in collaboration with LVMH and its 75 Maisons.
Final words for Laetitia Roche-Grenet, LVMH Directeur Open Innovation: “Becoming an entrepreneur is not an easy game, but being part of LVMH Maison Des Startups is a game changer.”
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