THREE QUESTIONS TO… // In 2021, 17% of smartphones sold in France were refurbished phones, i.e. almost one in five phones. Laure Cohen, co-founder of Certideal, returns to this booming market.
The Certideal adventure dates back to the end of 2015. Its two founders, Laure Cohen and Yoann Valensi, then worked in the field of roaming and collected BlackBerrys in cupboards for their tests. Faced with this accumulation, the idea of offering refurbished smartphones was born. With an essential service, certification, to avoid the vagaries of sales on LeBonCoin or on certain marketplaces. For DigitalLaure Cohen returns to the refurbished market in France, as well as to the diversification strategy of Certideal, which generates 60 million euros in turnover and sells between 200,000 and 300,000 units per year.
Laure Cohen, co-founder of Certideal © Certideal
Since our launch, we have realized that there are more requests than offers. And for that, we had to find a reliable supply. If you buy from French operators, the volumes are too small. We therefore turned to American operators who regularly renew their subscribers’ terminals. Their collection is more natural too. 90% of refurbished smartphones come from the United States. We go through brokers. Then, we manage the entire supply chain from our offices in Levallois-Perret. In the smartphones we buy, there is food and drink. We certify all the devices that pass through our workshops and they benefit from a 24-month warranty. This is what differentiates us from a Back Market for example, our main competitor.
80% of the phones we sell are actually from the Apple brand, 20% are Samsung S range. To afford an iPhone 13 for example, you have to drop a minimum wage. By choosing a refurbished iPhone, you benefit from a quality product, close to the latest models released, at a much more attractive price. The greatest demand is for the iPhone 8, XR and iPhone 11. 90% of the refurbished products we sell are smartphones. We also sell iPads and Apple Watches, but these are devices that we keep longer.
The market weighs around 1 billion euros in France, 7 billion in Europe and 43 billion worldwide. The average basket is around €300, or 3 million units sold in France. Between 10 and 12% of Certideal customers return their old smartphone. We would like this share to increase to 25%. We raised 15 million euros at the end of 2021 to develop internationally, which currently represents 20% of our turnover. We have developed the Spanish market. In Italy, there is enormous potential. The idea is to open other countries like Poland.
Historically, we are BtoC oriented. But in front of the increasing number of companies which approach us for fleets of smartphones, we have created our offer. We have clients like Atos or Axa, groups who are asking us for 200 and then 1,000 telephones. But also smaller companies. We are going to launch a dedicated BtoB site. It’s a market that we think is super dynamic. In business, there is an obligation to move towards responsible behavior. Afterwards, these are specific requests, we need homogeneous fleets. For example, we are asked for 300 iPhone XR money at once. Marketplaces cannot necessarily respond to this. We have resolved the issue of sourcing with American operators. A player like Sprint is capable of supplying between 100 and 150,000 products at once. And with telework, we have more and more demand for tablets and PCs. We work on iPad fleets. The tablets are the same sourcing but there is not the same volume. The PCs are with other partners.