Bambuser wins 2021 LVMH Innovation Award

Start-up Bambuser that specialises in live stream shopping events has been crowned the 2021 LVMH Innovation Award overall winner. 

Bambuser aims to bridge the gap between online and offline buying experiences and allows brands to host live shopping sessions online with influencers or sales associates. These shows are hosted natively on the brands’ websites, enabling them to own the look and feel of the experience and manage conversations, data and check-out. The start-up’s clients include Parfums Christian Dior, Ted Baker, Farfetch, Frame, Tommy Hilfiger and LuisaViaRoma.

The start-up was chosen as the overall winner of the 2021 LVMH Innovation Awards by Bernard Arnault, LVMH chairman and chief executive officer, Toni Belloni, LVMH group managing director, and the members of the selection committee.

As winners, Bambuser will receive six months of “personalised support” as part of LVMH’s accelerator programme, ‘La Maison des Start-ups,’ based at the Station F start-up campus in Paris.

Commenting on the win, Sophie Abrahamsson, chief commercial officer at Bambuser, said in a statement: “At Bambuser we are on a mission to change retail. We are so proud to contribute to do this with the LVMH Group. Any start-up needs more than just a mission to succeed: a dedicated and highly skilled team that doesn’t take no for an answer, and that one important customer who believes in you and wants to trail-blaze with you, and that is what LVMH is to us.”

As well as being overall winners, Bambuser also won the Omnichannel and Retail Experience award. 

LVMH announces 2021 Innovation Award winners

The 2021 LVMH Innovation Awards received more than 850 entries from around the world. The luxury conglomerate selected 28 start-ups from 12 different countries as finalists for their approach to the theme ‘The Future of Customer Experience is Here’.

Alongside the overall winner, awards were given out across six different categories: Data and Artificial Intelligence, Employee Experience, Media and Brand Awareness, Omnichannel and Retail Experience, Operations and Manufacturing Excellence, and Sustainability. 

For the first time in the awards five year history, six start-ups received awards instead of three in previous years. 

Each of the start-ups “stood out from the competition” in their respective categories said LVMH in a statement, and all “embody excellence in its particular area of expertise, with products or services that are helping to shape the customer experience of the future”.


French start-up, Data&Data founded by Zouheir Guedri won the Data and Artificial Intelligence category for its ability to analyse large volumes of transactions carried out on international marketplaces to help luxury companies fine-tune their marketing strategies. Data&Data was one of the startups that participated in the fourth season of LVMH’s La Maison des Startups accelerator programme at Station F.

Each One was recognised for Employee Experience. The start-up created in 2015 by Fanny Prigent, Maxime Baudet and Théo Scubla aims to enhance the visibility of refugees and migrants with work permits by putting them in touch with multinational companies.

England-based game publisher and developer Aglet, founded by Ryan Mullins in 2019 received the Media and Brand Awareness award for its game enabling sneaker fans to earn in-game currency, compete with other players and collect limited-edition virtual sneakers designed by some of the world’s leading brands.


The Operations and Manufacturing Excellence award was won by Hipli launched in 2020 by Anne-Sophie Raoult and Léa Got. Hipli designs and produces reusable packaging, as well as offering a service allowing consumers to easily post the packaging back to its sorting centres using the prepaid label. Just one year after its creation, Hipli already operates in nine countries across Europe.

The final award for sustainability was awarded to Galy, a US-headquartered start-up founded by Luciano Bueno and Paula Elbl. Galy was launched to address the issue of excess water and pesticide use in cotton production and offers apparel brands cotton grown from cells in bioreactors.


LVMH group managing director, Toni Belloni, added: “Innovation is an absolute obsession at LVMH. It’s what lets us continually heighten the appeal and desirability of our Maisons. We fuse luxury and technology together, and the finalists of the 2021 Innovation Award will bring us their capacity to nourish this encounter even more. Their entrepreneurial spirit joins and inspires our own.”