Villa Blu Newsletter #6

At Villa Blu by Robertet, the months of September and October were spent under the sign of meeting international entrepreneurs abroad and in Grasse 🌍

A Villa Blu by Robertet delegation was back in Shanghai end of September to attend Notes Shanghai, the biggest niche perfumery fair in the world. We were extremely proud to see our two fragrance startups, Selvatico and Maison Nolte become one of the biggest attractions of the four-day event. For us, it was a powerful way of helping them test a foreign market and prepare their expansion into China.

At Villa Blu, we’re good at two things : accelerating natural startups & hosting amazing parties at our iconic offices. This time we mixed both. Over 200 people visited us during a whole day in the middle of the Cannes Tax Free as we greeted over 40 Chinese entrepreneurs and influencers. And from 11AM to 1AM, we saw a steady stream of high-profile investors, partners, distributors and press mingle with our startups and Robertet executives. A warm thank you to everyone who stopped by and made this another memorable event 🥂

On October 8th, despite the unfortunate weather, we invited 10 startups to pitch in front of our Selection Committee. These entrepreneurs were picked out of 100+ applications to join us for our 4th Batch in the Villa Blu acceleration program. We were extremely pleased by the quality of the pitches and choosing 4 to 6 startups out of the lot was extremely difficult. Selection results will be announced in the following days so stay tuned for more information 🤫

Our natural homecare startup is boosting its B2B offering to continue working with well-known textile or clothing brands. Over the past years, alongside their consumer brand, Danika have worked closely with niche textile brands on co-developing natural and ecological detergence products. Now, this part of their identity is being taken to a higher level with deeper focus put on accompanying businesses create their own homecare lines from textile-specific laundry to hypoallergenic, child-friendly products 🫧

After months of R&D, Lao Care unveiled their innovative natural technology, Intense Protein Bonding, at the MCB 2024 along with their new brand identity and products. MCB is one of the biggest trade shows for Hair Care & Beauty, showcasing 400+ brands and hosting 50K+ visitors over three days. The whole Villa Blu team was proud of Lisa and her team for being finalist of the Grand Prix de l’Innovation and the reception for her brand blew past expectations 🏆

At the moment, three of our startups are currently raising funds, with more preparing themselves for a Q2 round.

1. Last chance : to jump in on our one-of-a-kind beverage company, Jane. They are looking for the last €200K on their €700K round 👉 if you want to know more you can contact Alexandre : alexandre@jane-store.com
   

2. Naturally effective & adorable petcare startup, Truffe & Moustache is completing a bridge round of €500K with Business Angels, banking partners and early-stage investors 👉 Thomas would be pleased to share his story and pitch deck : thomas@truffe-moustache.com

With the next newsletter coming soon in November, you’ll discover the startups from our next Batch, a trip to London and our now legendary onboarding week.

See you all next month 👋