SMES
Califrais shares his funding experience
SMES
"Karmen has enabled us to be closer to our wholesalers, reduce logistics costs and therefore charge better prices."
Hello, my name is Pierre Lévy. I co-founded Califrais eight years ago. I went to business school in Montreal after which I accumulated several entrepreneurial experiences.
It was during an experience at the Rungis market during my studies that I discovered the magic of this environment. This place is incredible, more than 12,000 people work there every night, products in all directions as well as smells.
In parallel to this discovery, I spoke with restaurant owners who showed me that their management of fresh produce supply was complex.
This is where the idea of Califrais was born. We offer a service that allows you to place an order for all Rungis products in just a few eyelashes and to have them delivered in one go the next morning, from 6am, to your establishment with a single contact and a single invoice.
Califrais also allows us to pool orders, to be more ecological and more economical since we aggregate all the logistic and transport flows.
Califrais' strength is to have been able to build, for 8 years, tailor-made tools that meet the specificity of each flow with :
These problems are well managed by human beings, physically, but the fact of digitizing makes it possible to facilitate the management of flows in an effective, ecological (less food waste) and economic way.
A year ago, an invitation to tender was issued and Califrais won against giants such as Amazon and Cdiscount. We beat them to the punch because our custom-made tool is better suited to the specificities of the Rungis market and the specificities of fresh produce. We also received the support of the wholesalers we have been working with for a long time.
Today, we operate solely under the brand name of rungismarket.com, with our customers as our partners.
At the end of 2021, Califrais joined forces with Stef, the leader in fresh produce transport in Europe. This is a huge group that has given us access to a high level of service with highly competitive prices throughout France.
Beyond this growth progress, we have always managed to keep 80% of the company's capital, the other parts belonging to the employees.
In 2022, we launched as rungismarket.com, and we've been growing super fast, with a lot of hiring in early 2022 to support that momentum.
Our first contact with Karmen was in the summer of 2022. At the time, we were 45 people with a turnover of almost €550,000 per month. We had great growth ambitions and that's why we went looking for financing without the risk of dilution.
We didn't want to go through the fundraising process because we felt that too many large fundraisings in a row have perverse effects on the company: less turnover, less control over the activity, less knowledge of the business, less integration into the heart of the business.
We have been optimizing our equity ratio with banks for some time now. We manage to go further than the average company thanks to our clear and reassuring system.
We have often cooperated with private banks but also with the BPI. We also looked at other solutions such as venture loans, subsidies and then, of course, your solution!
Initially, three companies were approached with an FBR solution. Karmen was very responsive, which was very nice. It was also your flexibility in helping us find the right solutions to put our case together that won us over. Overall, the fact that you were so efficient was really impressive and persuasive.
The implementation of Karmen financing is :
In terms of employment, Karmen funding has allowed us to continue our recruitment campaign over time.
In terms of customer acquisition, financing has been a great help. We were able to optimize and refine our sales approach.
The first phase consisted in being more efficient for the customers who come naturally to Califrais and those we approach. As a proof, we went from 30 to 70 customers per month.
The second phase consisted of reworking the allocation of our sales people's time to larger prospects. To do this, we reorganized ourselves to manage small customers more efficiently by monopolizing fewer human resources and redirecting these resources to larger customers.
This restructuring has also enabled us to be closer to our wholesalers, to negotiate larger volumes, to reduce logistics costs and therefore to charge better prices, i.e. economies of scale.
I recommend Karmen to all organizations with sufficient financial resources to afford FBR.
In this case, we had it, which allowed us to acquire the above-mentioned metrics and to go to our potential investors with real confidence and stability.
I would also advise including Karmen in a millefeuille of financing solutions. It is very interesting and profitable to set up a mille feuille, with more or less thick slices of financing, to cover all our needs. As a matter of fact, most of the time in business, the mix of solutions produces the best effects by their interferences.
Eat vegetables even if it costs more than before! Increases in energy costs will undoubtedly have an impact on vegetable prices. However, it is important to eat healthy, both for your physical and mental health, and even as a young entrepreneur!
