The whole building heard them scream. In late 2019, four founders sat in a small office in Paris when the first order arrived on Ankorstore. Pierre-Louis Lacoste later told an interviewer that the noise carried through the walls.
Lacoste knew exactly what a small shopkeeper feels, because he had been one. Before Ankorstore he ran his own shop, then spent seven years managing a clothing brand. He opened the first US concept store for the Basque brand Jean Vier in Los Angeles, held a senior role at the Canadian label Lolë from its Montreal headquarters, and then became country manager for Etsy in France. Each job showed him the same gap. Online platforms gave large retailers every tool, while the independent boutique had a phone and a catalogue.
Nicolas d'Audiffret and Nicolas Cohen had already built A Little Market, a site for handmade goods.
He has said Ankorstore was not a 'Eureka moment' but a long-held wish. The name comes from a retail term, the anchor store, the shop that pulls people down a street. He wanted independent retailers to be that anchor in their own town.
He was not alone. Nicolas d'Audiffret and Nicolas Cohen had already built A Little Market, a site for handmade goods. Mathieu Alengrin came from Vestiaire Collective, where he was head engineer. The four started in November 2019 with a marketplace problem that kills most such businesses: no shops without brands, no brands without shops. They also had to convince investors that retail was not dead, he said.
What made the difference was a rule. A shop could order from a brand with a minimum of €100, where classic wholesale might demand thousands. For a small boutique that was the difference between trying a new label and ignoring it.
Investors saw it. Alven and Global Founders Capital backed a seed round of about €6 million. Index Ventures led €25 million in late 2020. In January 2022, just over two years after launch, a €250 million Series C led by Tiger Global valued Ankorstore at €1.75 billion. At that point it reported more than 200,000 independent retailers and 15,000 brands across 23 European countries, with almost 400 employees and plans to hire a thousand more.
Rivals such as the American Faire press hard. Still, the founders show a useful habit. They did not chase a flashy invention. They took a problem they had lived behind a shop counter, sketched the fix in plain words, and gave it a name that explained the mission.