How French Startup Joone Went From Selling 0 to 4 Million Diapers Every Month In 3 Years

Joone, a direct-to-consumer French startup founded in 2017 by CEO Carole Juge-Llewellyn, managed to shake the diaper market, valued at $822 million (729 million euros) in France, in a matter of just a few years.

Selling clean, eco-friendly diapers through monthly subscriptions, Joone met instant success. Word-of-mouth led the brand to quickly convince thousands of mothers to buy its safe baby product, and the company sold 5 million diapers during its first year of business.

Two years later, Joone revealed it was selling 2.5 million diapers every month and that it counted 80,000 monthly subscribers across 14 countries. The brand, which then launched a whole line of baby care products ("The Perfect Moisturizing Milk," "The Perfect Liniment" and "The Perfect Hair & Body Wash" among others) added brick-and-mortar pop-up store experiences to showcase its products and reach new audiences. Over the years, Joone has strengthened its retail presence and its products are now distributed in 300 drugstores, 100 high-end supermarkets as well as in the Galeries Lafayette, Printemps and Le Bon Marché, three prestigious Parisian department stores.

In 2020, the business reached more than $23 million (20 million euros) in annual revenue. Offering dozens of products destined for babies, kids, pre-teens and mothers today, Joone is poised to become the new care brand for the next generation of families.

In an interview with The Org, founder and CEO Carole Juge-Llewellyn shared how her first unsuccessful venture led her to start Joone, and how her radical vision helped her create desire for everyday products.

From a Ph.D. in American literature to the startup journey

Carole Juge-Llewellyn grew up in Vichy, a city of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of France renowned for its thermal baths. As a kid, Juge-Llewellyn didn't dream of being an entrepreneur. She first wanted to be a veterinarian before deciding to become a writer. Her love of reading and writing eventually led the teenager to pursue studies in literature at the Université Paris Sorbonne, a time during which she wrote several movie scripts and novels on the side. After choosing American literature as a specialization, the 20-year-old student flew to the U.S. in 2004 to spend one year at the University of North Carolina as part of her master's program. Passionate about the discipline, Juge-Llewellyn obtained her Ph.D. in American literature six years later while working on the side as a research assistant at Brown and Emory.

"I don't like to do things halfway. I wanted to research literature, I wanted to teach literature. Since a Ph.D. was the highest academic level I could reach in the field to be able to do research and to teach it was simply the perfect path,” she told The Org.

What drew her to study American literature in particular? "Even though English wasn't my mother tongue, I started learning it at an early age and I loved it. I like how this language is articulated," the now-CEO explained. Juge-Llewellyn keeps a fond memory of her time in the U.S. Because of her studies in American literature, she dug into the civilization, the history and the legacy of her host country which made her feel very close to American culture.

"What I found pretty striking over there is that feeling that you can become whoever you want, that there's no real limit to what you can want or do. Possibilities are pretty much endless, which is a crucial difference from the French mindset that likes to put people into boxes, even though things are now changing,” she said. “When I came back to France from the U.S. ten years ago, I was a professor, a writer, an actress, and I worked hard to demonstrate that I was serious about all the endeavors I was pursuing and to avoid being perceived as a person who doesn't know what to do and consequently does a bit of everything."

After a horse accident that left her right arm injured, Juge-Llewellyn, who is right-handed, remained stuck at home for six months with nothing much to do. "To avoid becoming crazy" in her own words, the young woman, who had always thought she wasn't cut out for entrepreneurship, finally started thinking seriously about a venture idea she had on her mind for quite some time: MommyVille. This social network built for young and soon-to-be mothers to exchange tips, recommendations and advice was based on her experience of seeing her sister become a mother. She then received a grant from the top French engineering school L'Ecole des Ponts-et-Chaussées to pursue an MBA and work on her idea.

How the failure of MommyVille led to the creation of Joone

In 2016, the CEO found herself running out of cash and forced to shut down MommyVille that she had started two years earlier. Despite the support of business angels and early investors such as BNP Paribas, the network hadn't reached enough growth to make it. From this first entrepreneurial experience, Juge-Llewellyn learned many things, but first and foremost that having the courage to make hard decisions early on is, in the long run, the best option.

After thinking for a short period that she would never ever launch a business again, the entrepreneur decided to take on a new startup adventure. The Paris-based incubator The Family convinced the former CEO that her insights on the motherhood market uniquely positioned her to take over the old incumbents from the industry. It offered to back her next venture if any idea was standing out. The offer was too exciting for Juge-Llewellyn to refuse.

Building Mommyville, the entrepreneur saw how the vast majority of young mothers were worried about not knowing how to take care of their baby, what products to use and how. This insight laid out the foundations for Juge-Llewellyn's new venture, Joone, which means “my sweetheart” in Iranian. The first product the CEO laid her eyes on was diapers. ”It was obvious, in terms of quality and communications, that the historical diaper brands were sleepy and that I could create a product radically different," she said.

"I know how to do research. I know how to look at a problem and how to look for answers but in a different way, which is at the core of what research is all about: finding something different than what others have found previously." To the founder’s admission, it was quite easy for her, being an industry outsider, to come up with revolutionary clean diapers. Since she wasn’t biased by how things were normally done by incumbents, she went to see potential industrial partners with a very different paradigm for her brief. “Instead of asking factories, ‘how can I make the cheapest diapers?’ I asked them ‘how can I make the best diapers in the market?’”Juge-Llewellyn said.

It took a year and a half to go from sourcing a manufacturer to getting the first prototype. In 2017 Joone’s then-four person team launched with a single product: its eco-friendly diaper sold as part of a monthly subscription ranging from $64.90 (65€ on the French e-store) to $141 (125€). Though Joone’s diapers were twice as expensive as distributor brands, it didn’t discourage potential clients to bet on the young startup, quite the contrary. The product’s clean and safe composition — they’re made in France and without endocrine disruptors, chlorine, phthalates, or parabens — was a striking differentiator that made the emerging brand stand out from older and established brands.

Building Joone as the hygiene and care product brand for the whole family

In 2018, after one year of activity, Joone’s revenue reached $1.1 million (1 million euros) and the business became profitable fueled by a 10% monthly growth and a team of only 20 employees. Growing that fast with a small team requires discipline. "You need to structure things a lot, which can be frustrating at times. You gain efficiency but you can also lose some along the way. When you double your workforce by two and go from 20 to 40 employees, you don't actually multiply your productivity by two," she said.

For the founder, in the venture world, every day brings its new share of problems.“What makes a stellar entrepreneur is not a great idea but their daily resilience in how they tackle execution,” Juge-Llewellyn said. In this regard, Juge-Llewellyn mentioned Ning Li, the former CEO of Made.com who is now heading Typology, the French cosmetics startup he founded in 2018. "I don't know an entrepreneur who has better operational execution skills than his. He's incredibly methodical and diligent,” she said.

The startup reached $23 million (20 million euros) in revenue in 2020, owning 3% of the domestic market share just three years after its launch. With 4.5 million diapers sold every month, and 10% of its sales made outside of France, Joone has solid foundations to conquer new territories.

The team, which currently counts 60 employees, should reach 100 team members by the end of 2022 and Juge-Llewellyn shared that it would hire mainly abroad. While the team counts many full-remote and flexible-remote employees, the company’s culture has remained strong because it had implemented rituals early on, a while before the pandemic hit the world in early 2020. The managing team keeps organizing recurring in-person events that punctuate the company’s life and foster connections between employees. Such events include lunch roulettes to create random lunch groups for everyone in the company to get to know each other as well as “Culture Joone" events where teams can share what is important to them and what animates them. "When you don't have an office you have to find other ways to build relationships. While you gain in productivity — people are less disturbed at home — you lose in collaboration because interactions on Zoom are less natural and spontaneous,” she said.

2020 was a big year for the young brand, which launched a new range of products destined to mothers as well as Doorz, its traceability platform that allows clients to trace the entire production journey of its products and check the origin of every element used in the diapers thanks to blockchain technology. The startup also raised $11 million (10 million euros) in Series B funding with Vaultier7, the London-based venture capital fund behind Vestiaire Collective.

The startup has now launched products for almost every member of the family. In 2020, the team extended its offer with new care products for women focused on pregnancy, including an anti-stretch mark oil and some post-partum dietary supplements. “It's the logical extension of what we were doing previously. Mothers trust our brand and love our s products, it made sense to offer them products they could use for themselves too," Juge-Llewellyn explains. Joone is now targeting two new segments, kids from 3 years old and pre-adolescent kids, with their dedicated lotions, face wash, and creams. In particular, the company developed a clean and gentle deodorant designed for 9-year-old kids for whom the offer is very limited in retail stores. “Most of them are either too aggressive or very gendered and sexualized,” the founder shared. While it’s too early to say if older incumbents will be fast enough to catch up, Joone is definitely reshaping the cosmetics and care industry landscape.