Meanwhile Boutique 2025 Review: Reaching a New Milestone

An intense, committed, and deeply transformative year.

2025 was a pivotal year.
I feel like I say it every year, but this one was doubly so: running the online store and the physical store, with almost the same staff.

Major new development in 2025: the opening of a 180 m² pop-up store (for one year) in Marseille.
An exciting adventure, but also demanding—personally, physically, and mentally—with a real challenge: making the digital and physical coexist without losing myself.

As I do every year, I’m taking the time to put it into words, look honestly at how far I’ve come, and share this review with complete transparency… with emojis this time.

🧡 What we loved in 2025

Despite its intensity, this year was also full of meaning, encounters, and collective achievements:

♻️ Created a resource center (solidarity thrift store) within the store, setting up a donation collection and sorting point in partnership with Refashion.

🔄 Created a committed local ecosystem, virtuous and short-circuited, with Mélanie from La Casse aux Trésors and revalorizing collected donations through local partner associations such as On se les gele dehors or La Maison de Yacine.

🤍 Wonderful collaboration with Manoe, as part of an exclusive collection, with a percentage of proceeds donated to UNICEF, in support of children in the Middle East.

👗 Participated in the first Slow Fashion Week in Marseille, with the Baga collective
and notably setting up workshops such as the Textile Fresk led by Anne-Christelle Beauvois from “1 déchet par jour”.
(It was a huge pleasure to receive a thank-you letter for our organization and participation, signed by Benoit Payan, Mayor of Marseille.)

🎙️ Media appearances to make our voice heard, such as on the radio, discussing impact entrepreneurship (Hello Radio Galere) or on social media, talking about my past as a compulsive shopper (CCarré for TV5 Monde).

🎤 Invited to speak about boldness to a supportive community of women—Les Épaulettes Marseille (Thank you, Erminda).

🎶 First participation in the DELTA Festival, Marseille’s largest music festival
— thank you to Provence Makers for the opportunity.

🤍 An incredible local and national community:
our customers, but also committed entrepreneurs like La Communauté des engagés and the networks that support me: Incubateur belle de mai, Inco, French Tech Marseille, Les Premières Sud, Impact France, not to mention all the inspiring encounters this year, and the wonderful course on women entrepreneurs’ well-being: Inner Business by Whitney.

✈️ A wonderful trip with young French-speaking entrepreneurs from the sustainable economy in Senegal for the GREF (Grand Rencontre des Entrepreuneur.e.s Francophones), selected and invited by the Office Franco-Québécois pour la Jeunesse (recap here).

🎄 Our first local Christmas markets in Marseille:
at the Friche Belle de mai, at Tiers Lab des Transitions, at and with the MAIF (Prado)… and the traditional Noël Rebelle vegan Christmas market at the Cité Fertile.

⚠️ The difficulties encountered

Because commitment does not eliminate the realities on the ground:

👥 Recruitment, which became a real issue in 2025: the challenge of meeting the need for hybrid profiles, combining a physical presence with office work.

🕰️ Managing a physical store: long hours, little rest, a real test over time.

🛍️ Shoplifting, yes… even in a solidarity store (we’re always looking for insurance that covers these thefts).

🔁 The difficulty of balancing the physical store and the online business.
Running a physical store sometimes means putting your social life aside: you can’t close the store, and some holidays are spent far from loved ones.

💡 The challenge of constantly finding new ideas and a strategy to get even more people into the store.

💌 Changing email marketing and automation tools, with an impact that is still too small.

😤 A very bad experience with a “B Corp” accounting firm, more than incorrect with my teams and me → as you can see, values are not everything.
(But good news: I’ve finally found a good accountant—I hope I never have to change again!)

❌ A major personal disappointment with a long-time partner brand (since our beginnings in 2021): After more than two years of discussions about a collaboration project, validated all the way to the prototype, everything was abruptly stopped.
→ total incomprehension and disappointment on the part of an “ethical” brand.

🟢 We continue with GOOD news

🏬 After 6 months, then 1 year, the store has been extended for another year at the Aushopping St-Loup center → thank you to Nhood for their renewed trust

🖼️ Meanwhile Boutique invited to decorate the MAIF shop windows in the PACA region
(Marseille, Aix, Nice, Vitrolles… soon nationwide? 👀)

📍 New committed partnership with the UMAY app, a free mobile app that fights street harassment and insecurity in public spaces and on public transport. Meanwhile Boutique is becoming a safe place for people who are victims of street violence.

🌊 New partnership with Sauvage Méditerranée which revalorizes waste collected from beaches along the Mediterranean coast (bottle caps, fishing nets, containers, polished glass…) to give it a second life through eco-designed creations: jewelry, trophies, and much more.

🗺️ Meanwhile Boutique officially joins the 2025 Mapping of French Retail by France Digitale 🎉

🔮 Perspectives and intentions for 2026

Learn, adjust, surround myself with better support:

⏱️ Be supported by a time management coach and finalize my overdue mission reports.

🤝 Continue and strengthen ties with local Marseille associations—a collaboration with 13 A'tipik soon?

🌱 Stick to a 100% organic strategy, while receiving support with content creation.

🎉 Celebrate our first year of having a physical store and continue our events.

💛 Continue to share the store with Mélanie from La Casse aux Trésors, who has become a true teammate.

💼Hire on a long-term basis to reduce turnover

♻️ Find someone to take over the management of the resource center before 2027.

🗂️ Get help with administrative management (doing it alone is becoming too much).

🏆 Participate in more conferences, competitions, trophies, and awards…

📱 Show myself more on social media → this time, I’ve really understood the concept of a “personal brand” (thank you, Tuy Mai, and Caroline Mignaux)

🎪 Continue organizing events in Paris or elsewhere, in committed venues.

🌍 Create even more committed local synergies.

🚀 But also…

🧠 Give myself time to launch a new tech project → AI & automation, in connection with Meanwhile Boutique.

🎙️ Relaunch the podcast, with interviews with committed brands
→ if anyone wants to take the lead, let’s talk 😉

🛑 Take real weekends off (not just Sundays)

🏦 Find a national physical bank that is committed and digitally advanced.

🤺 Keep up with sports: Thank you to David Simonian for insisting that I participate in an event at Klanik, where I discovered fencing… and I’ve been going to a club since September, and I love it.

🤍 Continue to make the most of new entrepreneurial encounters
(incubators, speaking engagements, workshops I lead, supporting entrepreneurs…)

🙏 Thank you

Thank you to you, online customers and word-of-mouth ambassadors, loyal customers who come back regularly: to discover new arrivals, say hello to us, and sometimes even bring us gifts 🥹
Thank you to the visitors of the Aushopping St-Loup center (yes, even those who just came to exercise or use the restroom 🤍)

Thank you for your responsible purchases, your positive feedback, and your loyalty.

Thank you to my loved ones, who are always there to support me.

Thank you to Vélo Métropole for my rental bike, a real time-saver and freedom in everyday life 🚲

Thank you to Nhood, MAIF, and Makesense for their trust.

Thank you to the 2025 Meanwhile Boutique team:
Méryam, Leïla, Finaritra, but also Alice, Ryan, Farah, Marina, Nina, Mélissa, and Alicia,
as well as all the La Casse aux Trésors volunteers who helped in the store: Audrey, Bouba, Milo, Claire, Laurence, Florian, Isabelle, Ridha… and the others. 🤍

The year in review video: