Within a few years, Arômes et Liquides became a juggernaut of the electronic cigarette market after building itself a solid reputation with its DIYing, ie making home-made e-liquids.
To understand how the small family company grew to become an e-commerce giant and a high-tech workplace, let us go back a few years...
JULY 2012, THE EPIPHANY...
Surrounded by his family and close friends one evening of July 2012, Julien Argaud shared an aperitif with some laughs and a few cigarettes here and there. The one who was smoking up to two packs of cigarettes per day was at the time a small and anonymous entrepreneur, with experience in selling hair extensions among other ventures, oblivious to the fact that this evening was going to change the course of his life.
Intrigued by one of his guest's electronic cigarette, Julien had a few puffs on his device, which he tried five years earlier without much success. Indeed, the devices at the time had not really convinced him, as the technology and reliability of e-cigarettes were very uncertain back then.
But that evening Julien took pleasure in (re)discovering this device and his pack of cigarettes was forgotten for the rest of the evening. Tickled by this discovery, Julien asked his friend about the best device for him and where to get one before ordering his first kit.
THE FIRST ORDER
A battery, a clearomizer and five e-liquids were delivered to the Argaud family's postbox the following week. Curious, Julien made use of this waiting time to search the Web and immerse himself in the world of e-cigarette forums, trying to understand how this famous electronic cigarette works, including its technical and electrical data. In reality, a whole world was opening up to him without him realising.
The much-awaited moment arrived and the results were beyond the expectations of the young entrepreneur.
"I was so delighted to finally be able to vape MY electronic cigarette that I tried the 5 flavours in one morning. I loved it, and I wanted more!" he says, like a child opening his presents on Christmas day!
The fun nature of it makes Julien want to try out other flavours and he ordered some more right away so he could find his all-dayer, meaning the e-liquid he can vape every day, at any time, without getting sick of it.
DO IT YOURSELF!
However, Julien noticed the harsh economic reality of all this as his experimenting proved to be quite costly, seeing as the price of a 10mL bottle of e-liquid was roughly based on the price of a pack of cigarettes, which was around 6€ back then. It was at this point that he discovered on an American forum, with great surprise and interest, that it is possible to make your own vaping juice by simply mixing some neutral and nicotined base with some flavour concentrates, just like you would do for a squash!
He then ordered his first package from Inawera, a famous Polish brand at the time that offered everything needed for electronic cigarette DIYing. New possibilities were now available to him!
"The website was only translated into a very approximative English, and I tried the best I could to constitute my first DIY e-liquid kit", he remembers.
If the first mixtures were unpalatable, due to a lack of experience in dosing and perfecting his home-made recipes, Julien noticed however the incredible potential of this new way of using e-liquids. On top of the lower cost of his home-made blends compared to the ready-made e-liquids, the infinite variety of possible flavours convinced Julien.
A FORUM AND ONLINE SHOP DEDICATED TO DIY!
Enthusiastic, he decided in the following weeks to create his own forum exclusively dedicated to e-liquid making, in order to share recipes, tips and information between members. But at that time bases and concentrates were only available through import (Poland, USA, Italy, etc), and the idea of creating from scratch a French online shop that offers DIY equipment quickly came to mind.
Being self-taught, Julien already had a foray into the world of e-commerce with X-Tension, a company he founded in 2007 at only 24 years old, and his training in programming and HTML, PHP/ SQL and CSS was useful once again.
The X-Tension venture ended due to the arrival on the market of a very aggressive competition, and Julien was in financial turmoil after losing the hair extension battle.
"I began at home, in a 4sqm cupboard"
Back then, the electronic cigarette market was growing from week to week and shops were popping up all over the place, be they physical or online. It was then unthinkable for Julien to rival the market's juggernauts, who offered very extensive catalogues of equipment and ready-made e-liquids.
Naturally, he decided to offer something different with an online shop exclusively dedicated to DIYing, a bold and uncertain gamble. "Nobody believed in the project, it was suicidal according to my entourage, it was a niche market. Only my wife trusted me and believed in the project", he confesses.
The Arômes et Liquides.fr website was born in late September 2012. Not wasting any time, Julien developed his new activity whilst letting the public browse the shop's website during its design and construction!
He still cannot explain how the first clients managed to find the Arômes et Liquides website's address in the first few days, with the first orders coming in and only having rudimentary logistics to fulfil them.
"I began at home, in a 4sqm cupboard, and wanting to do things properly I had to recondition and relabel each concentrate and nicotined base in my catalogue to comply with regulations. I did not have many products as I had few resources, so I launched the website with a dozen of concentrates and 4 base variations. The beginning investment was of 3,000€, borrowed from left, right and centre." says the boss of the now established e-commerce website.
A FLYING START
The forum, alongside the online shop, continued to attract new members who enjoyed sharing e-liquid recipes, and these fans rapidly became clients of Julien's small company.
Better, the loyal forum users were directly interacting with the entrepreneur, who always listened to what they had to say and broadened his offer bit by bit with new flavours. The orders came in with an irresistible frenzy and their number doubled from month to month! The reality of all this quickly caught up with Julien. Despite his wife's support, storing the products became more and more complicated in their small house, and the working hours were endless.
Julien answered the phone and emails, wrote the product descriptions and packaged the products. "We worked 16 hours every day and had no time to rest!" he says a few years later. The young couple tried its best to divide their time between Arômes et Liquides and their personal life. Doubt settled in and Julien was fraught with an ever-increasing demand, overwhelmed by the rapid growth of his company. However, he continued to believe in his venture at all costs, and the consequence of this would prove him right.
FINALLY SOME FRENCH-MADE DIY!
At the start of 2013 the company began a new phase, as Arômes et Liquides rented its first 100sqm premises in order to have a space more suited to its activity. "No more nicotine bases strewn across the living room due to lack of space, no more boxes of empty bottles packed into my small garage! Gone is the postal van parking in my front yard, it was time to separate private and professional life!".
Julien then called upon his entourage and his contacts, the same people who came to help out during the weekends to package and label the products of the rapidly growing micro-structure. Within a few months, Julien hired nine full-time employees, only a year after moving into the new premises. The young entrepreneur seized the opportunity to develop what he was really passionate about, and which would make the online shop famous, French-made DIY!
However, electronic cigarettes had a controversial image, so much so that no laboratories wanted anything to do with vaping products, except one. They finally found an agreement with said laboratory, which allowed them to commercialise 100% French nicotined bases and concentrates, with very strict standards, free from paraben, ambrox or diacetyl. Julien is very committed to this proof of quality, to provide a total transparency, and he will maintain that ethic throughout the years.
The "A&L" logo appeared, with quite an interesting origin story: "I did not have a logo, and AROMES ET LIQUIDES was not very sexy as a brand name. So I had to come up with a brand and a visual for the latter in about 5 min, so A&L was born!".
A human-focused process...
Strong from their ever-growing success, A&L invested in new premises once again in March 2014, with this time over 350sqm, only a year and a half after opening the website to the public!
The storehouse's alleys seemed vast and empty at first for the family-run business, oversized even. Julien did not forget the importance of friendship, with Friday-night pizzas and poker tournaments, intense video game sessions during lunch break and even a trip to Disneyland Paris. This is what the happy bunch of Pandas looks like, combining effort, solidarity, companionship and carelessness, which makes them stronger and capable of satisfying their clients whatever the circumstances, and even when the orders kept pouring in with 400, 500, 600, and even 700 orders on the same day!
…supplemented by algorithms
The continuous growth definitively pushed A&L to professionalise whilst maintaining this team spirit. It is naturally that Julien entrusted the role of manager in 2014 to his best friend and supermarket buyer Kevin. The objective was clear now, to remain the leader of e-liquid DIYing despite the market's growing competition, whilst diversifying the offer on its website.
"My previous experience with X-tension taught me that a monopoly can be lost the very next day, and that you always need to adapt to the market and stay leader at all costs." explains Julien, who does not forget that despite building a loyal customer base, they could turn their backs on him tomorrow. At the time, A&L could not supply all the necessary equipment for vaping their home-made e-liquids.
Kevin gave himself three months to get to grips with the market, understand the vaper's habits, foresee the trends and identify the key players in order to fully take the plunge into the ruthless world of electronic cigarette sellers.
The duo then rapidly found their place despite their very different temperaments. It is one of A&L's strengths, this synergy between various personalities and talents that results in a natural driving force.
For example, the end-of-year rush saw the team and the management prepare the last few orders in the middle of the night and in good spirit, blasting music throughout the storehouse and still slipping the sweets and little notes into the packages, just like in the beginning.
This will to maintain a close relationship with the client is also one of A&L's trademarks, since every order includes a personalised card with a caricature of the picker who prepared the package.
Curious neighbours and a packed showroom
Thanks to word of mouth, vapers from the neighbouring city of St Etienne started turning up and buying their products directly from the storehouse in 2013, to Julien's surprise. A showroom was quickly built on the premises and two vendors were recruited to answer the increasing demand and to provide a space where clients could try out the products. This was a great opportunity since the client's feedback would be precious in elaborating the new flavours.
"It is a genuine laboratory, we finally have the client's feedback on the spot and for us it's wonderful. It allows us to be close to our clientele, who are even willing to try out our concentrate prototypes, enabling us to modify and refine the blends in order to create the best product possible." he says, delighted to see the growing influx of people in the small showroom, quickly reaching the symbolic mark of a 100 customers on Saturdays.
Thanks to the altruistic vendors who are passionate about electronic cigarettes, the showroom's clients received proper advice. They were no longer made up of only neighbours, but also vapers from much farther away, sometimes hundreds of kilometres away, coming to taste the latest A&L products!
On an equal footing
Meanwhile, the online shop got a significant revamping in order to become sexier and more appealing, and Julien structured the company with the same flair by placing the best people at each position.
A specialised writer, a graphic designer and two programmers contributed to the rise of A&L by making Aromes-et-Liquides.fr a very attractive website for beginners and experienced vapers at the same time.
The time when orders were packaged in Julien's garage seemed so long ago but so recent at the same time. A&L equipped itself with the best tools in order to succeed. The company developed a semi-automated system to manage all the work processes and simplify the daily tasks.
"From purchasing the merchandise to our clients receiving their package, everything is computerized. We have created our own referencing and storing system, which avoids any packaging mistakes and lets us know in real time where every product is located. Our software is nearly able to order directly from our suppliers by calculating the current trends, using a home-made algorithm." Julien explains his well-carried out work-plan that leaves nothing to chance.
A living hub
The electronic cigarette market continued to grow, and at the time there were always new releases. Not a day goes by without a new atomizer, electronic box or e-liquid release, and Kevin pulled all the stops to follow this hectic pace, to the point of out-manoeuvring the competition when it comes to new star products.
The company grows day by day, and A&L exceeded twenty employees in 2016, so much so that the storehouse feels smaller and smaller, up to the point where new product entries had be slowed down due to the lack of storage space!
In October 2016, the now electronic cigarette giant adapted once more and moved to newly built 2000sqm premises that include offices, a much bigger storehouse and even 150sqm dedicated solely to the employees' well-being, with a recreation room, gaming area and high-tech gym!
"We want everyone to feel at home here, it is in our DNA!" confirms the boss of a business now worth 7m€ in revenue that aims to double that amount in the year to come.
The Aromes-et-Liquides website is now an e-commerce reference in the Loire region, but also in France in general. Setting up physical shops in the local area and further afield is a realistic short term objective considered by the management, in order to establish the Panda's brand locally and internationally.
