Grégoire de Tilly appointed CEO of Ankorstore

Seven years after its founding, Ankorstore is entering a new chapter. Grégoire de Tilly has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of the platform, with a clear mandate: refocus the company’s investments on its core business and give brands and independent retailers the tools they need to grow.

Grégoire de Tilly is no stranger to the world of commerce and marketplaces. A graduate of ESCP, he began his career at Procter & Gamble before joining Bain & Company, then turned to entrepreneurship — co-founding Pixibox, one of France’s pioneers in digital couponing, and Desmarques.com, a specialist in online clearance retail. He went on to lead several commerce and marketplace businesses: Spartoo, Jumia, Smallable, La Ruche qui dit Oui! and Les Fromageries de l’Étoile.

Over twenty years spent understanding the dynamics of distribution, navigating growth phases and leading business transformations across very different sectors and business models. That experience is what he now brings to Ankorstore.

His conviction, put simply: “Commerce doesn’t need to be reinvented. It needs to be better equipped.”

Major e-commerce platforms have fundamentally changed buying habits: consumers still look for original products and expert advice, but now expect speed, choice and simplicity as well. Independent retailers are not in the business of competing with e-commerce giants on price or logistics. What they need is access to the same operational efficiency — so they can focus on what makes them unique: a strong identity, a distinctive offering and a close relationship with their customers.

That is the thinking behind Ankorstore’s new roadmap, which can be summed up in three words: connect, simplify, grow. It is not about diversification or adding features for the sake of it, but about tools and services designed to meet real, concrete needs:

Upcoming developments — particularly around data and artificial intelligence — follow the same logic: making the Ankorstore ecosystem smoother, more efficient and easier to use day to day.

Already present in 30 countries, Ankorstore brings together more than 300,000 independent retailers and 30,000 brands across Europe. The long-term ambition is to become the marketplace of reference for independent retail on the continent — a European champion, built for European players, independent from the major global platforms.

As Grégoire de Tilly puts it: “By refocusing on its core business and continuously improving its B2B tools and services, Ankorstore is fully reconnecting with its founding promise: to be the infrastructure quietly working behind the scenes for brands and independent retailers, helping them grow and keeping our town centres alive with passion and character.”

Sourcing, purchasing, payment terms, catalogues: each of these workstreams is a concrete building block in service of the same goal — enabling brands and independent retailers to focus on what they do best.

Each area will be covered in more depth over the coming weeks. In the meantime, the whole Ankorstore team would like to warmly welcome Grégoire.