FEATURED INTERVIEW: AIRFREE


French startup airfree seeks to democratise inflight retail


In June, French startup airfree took a further step towards commercially launching what it claims is the ‘first inflight duty free product marketplace’ after securing a €2.3m/$2.6m capital injection. The company’s Co-Founder and VP of Sales, Valéry Méary, tells Charlotte Turner how airfree can revolutionise the inflight retail model without rocking the boat.


on the first leg of their trip and have it delivered to their seat on the second flight.


Above: Airfree's concept allows customers to purchase products inflight with the option of seat delivery, home delivery or pick-up on the ground,


A


irfree appears to have built a multi-faceted inflight retail eco-system


through which all stakeholders can benefit. In your own words, tell us why airfree makes sense for the inflight retail market right now... To improve operational effectiveness airlines have cut back


on both the quality and variety of products available to buy while in the air. This is accentuated by the increasing number of airlines making the decision to withdraw their inflight retail programmes, as it delivers a too limited customer experience and creates lots of operational complexities (American Airlines, Qantas, KLM, Tap etc). Instead, they should be looking to


“To improve operational effectiveness airlines have cut back on both the quality and variety of products available to buy while in the air. This is accentuated by the increasing number of airlines making the decision to withdraw their inflight retail programmes, as


it delivers a too limited customer experience and creates lots of operational complexities.”


Valéry Méary, Co-Founder and VP of Sales, airfree


54 TRBUSINESS


partner with retailers to offer items that can be purchased during the flight and picked up once they have landed. This is what airfree offers; we reinvent the inflight shopping experience by making airport duty free products and services available for passengers while they are up in the air, via a marketplace. On top of partnering with ground


operators, we also open up new opportunities for traditional inflight retailers to extend their service. We allow them to replace the


paper catalogue with a digital experience and we make new models possible. For example, a passenger with a connecting flight could order


I understand that launching this company with the buy-in from all stakeholders has at times looked to be an almost impossible feat. Tell us about some of the obstacles you encountered in your journey to this point... Indeed, many stakeholders need to be involved to make the model work. Our first challenge is technical. The bandwidth available inflight is very costly for the airline and limited in terms of usage capabilities, ultimately delivering a frustrating digital passenger experience. To bypass this constraint, we


had to heavily invest in building an e-commerce platform specifically designed for inflight use, which reduces the bandwidth consumption by 50 times for the airline while providing a seamless shopping experience to passengers. This required us to develop


strong partnerships with the inflight connectivity suppliers. Many other features have been developed ad-hoc for the travel industry, such as route- based catalogue customisation, frequent flyers points earn & burn etc. The second obstacle is


commercial. Duty free is an almost non-digitalised industry and it needs revolutionising in order to move from a closed environment towards a more collaborative model. Collectively, the objective for


the industry is to increase store penetration and product exposure in order to drive conversion. The challenge for every party involved is


OCTOBER 2019


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