Histoire de cadeau, first business born from our storytelling workshop!
This story starts with a storytelling workshop, one of these random and rare moments in life where all the pieces of the puzzle beautifully fall into place…
A full day of passionate learning in Paris… Among the participants, there are Didem and Céline, each of them having their own consulting business, each of them curious to discover more in depth what storytelling really is about.
So the participants casually exchange during coffee breaks, lunch, work sessions, getting to know each other and decide to follow-up after the workshop.
On one side, we have Didem. After spending many years in IT organizations, she decided to take the leap and start her own business. She launched The Startup Atelier to help technological startups demystify customer development, to get clients and build a healthy business.
In parallel, she also had another project, for which she started the market research and early steps. But it remained mostly on the shelves, since days only consist of 24 hours.
She was looking for someone to start it with. In this project, she had put all the best of her worldwide travel experience, her curiosity, her love for finding niche and local products. She imagined bringing together her findings into an e-boutique where people could find original products to offer as gifts to their beloved ones, and through that rediscover the true value of gift giving.
On the other side, Céline spent several years working in purchasing management for Telecom operators before deciding also to take a leap and to start La Framboise Carrée, to help SMEs differentiate themselves from the competition and attract more clients.
In parallel, she pursued her passion and her curiosity for innovation and used the little amount of free time she had left to follow events, and to create a database about anything related to innovation, creativity and originality, whether it is an idea, a design or a product. She developed a wide knowledge in various areas where new things are happening or new products keep coming up.
Connecting the dots
The pieces of the puzzle come together that day when Didem sees their common interest and motivation and how complementary their know-how is. After the workshop, the brainstorming goes on with long, lively, chitchat phone calls, coffees, and mail exchanges.
Didem asks Céline to consider becoming co-founder of her project.
To her big surprise, not only does Céline come back with a positive answer, but also with a long list of designers as part of her proposal.
What is there left to do? Implement the whole thing, and do it fast. Which brings us today, when the technical platform is very close to getting completed, legal details are almost sorted out, vigorous designer selection is on-going and marketing campaigns are ready to be launched!
Oh, by the way, not to forget: it is not a surprise that they chose the name « Histoire de Cadeau » (Gift Story) for their e-Boutique. Since it all started on a beautiful day in Paris, at a storytelling workshop.
http://www.histoiredecadeau.com/
La page Facebook d’Histoire de Cadeau
