An entrepreneur who said no to Amazon

A hairdresser from Montérégie, Luc Vincent created his own line of products that he now sells worldwide, especially in Europe and the United States.

He started garnering attention by participating in hairdressing contests and contributing to TV and radio shows. He developed his hairdressing academy and his own line of products with his wife. His business growth exploded early in the pandemic.

With online sales, its turnover is not calculated in thousands of dollars, but in millions. From this moment Amazon started paying attention to him.

“I think they saw that my products had a lot of searches on the Internet,” he says. I started getting calls to sell my products on their platform. But I didn't get on, I wanted to show that in Quebec, it is possible to do without Amazon.

The offers were repeated. More persistently.

“They used to call me every month. People ask me: 'Luke, when are you finally joining the big Amazon family?'. We are checking my dog, my wife. Multiplying turnover was promised to me. At some point I had to make it clear that I didn't want to.

– Luke Vincent

During Operation Charm, Luke Vincent noticed that when you entered his name into a search engine, the first thing that came up was not his online sales site. That's Amazon.

“I didn't really understand because there were no products for sale on the American platform,” he recalls.

Immediately, he realized it was his book Not enough to tear your hair outPublished nearly ten years ago by Law Press, it is now for sale on Amazon.

“I have no control over it,” he said.

From this book, which is for sale on Amazon, Internet users can click on a hyperlink that sends them to other pages on the platform that offer similar hair products, but sold by Luc Vincent's competitors.

“I had to put money into buying my name back so that my site came up first when people were looking for my products on the web,” said Mr. Vincent explained that he invested a few tens of thousands. Dollars to do it with Google.

Even today, by typing the founder's name into a search engine, a sponsored link from Amazon will take you to his book.

Irreducible Gaul

But why refuse to sell your products on the world's largest online sales platform?

“I prefer to keep my identity. I hire people here and my products are practically 100% Québécois, from the cap to the labels. It is certainly tempting, the promises are extraordinary, especially to increase our turnover, we will double, triple. But I was able to do it while maintaining control of my brand,” explains Luc Vincent.

Joining Amazon's ranks also comes with risks, the Quebec businessman noted.

“First, we have to deliver our pallets to Amazon warehouses, pay for storage and handling. And if it doesn't work as we think, they send it back to us at our expense,” he explained.

Recently, a new proposal landed on Luke Vincent's desk in a circuitous way. “It is an agency that does business with a platform. We sell our products to this agency, which then takes care of everything else. But once again, it's not entirely ours.

Today, Luke Vincent looks a bit like an irrepressible Gaul. He is “not in the Amazon”.

“It's creating a bit of a stir, especially in the United States. People say to me: 'Oh, you're not on Amazon?'. I think I won.

– Luke Vincent

Amazon did not respond to our questions regarding the methods it uses to recruit businesses to its platform.

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