[EN] 3 questions for Julie Chapon, Co-founder @Yuka

Ahead of our flagship event, the Transatlantic Leaders Forum, we asked Julie Chapon, Co-founder @Yuka, to give us some feedback on the launch of Yuka in the US.

In the process of adapting Yuka for the U.S market, what unexpected challenges or cultural differences have you encountered that might not exist in France?

I think one of the biggest challenges is access to the media. In France and Europe, access to the media has been relatively easy for Yuka and has allowed us to have a lot of press coverage, which contributed to Yuka’s success. And we did all of this ourselves, as we never hired a PR agency. Here, access to the media seems much more difficult and saturated. Even after hiring a PR agency, it is hard to get media coverage

Based on Yuka’s experience in France and its expansion into the U.S, what key differences have you observed in consumer behavior and product quality between these two markets?

The first thing is that our user base in the US is younger, probably due to the fact that Yuka became known on TikTok thanks to viral videos made by users of the app. This forces us to adapt our communication and invest in platforms like TikTok, where we were not previously present. The second key point in terms of purchasing behavior that we have observed is related to the purchase of the premium version of the app, which is our source of revenue. While the conversion rate in Europe is around 0.5%, it is 2% in the US. Whereas Europeans are more hesitant to pay for an app, Americans are much more inclined to purchase the paid version, mainly because it’s more in their culture to be willing to pay for an optimized experience

Do you believe the app could play a role in influencing food and cosmetic regulations in the US, similar to how it has impacted manufacturers’ practices in France?

Yes I definitely believe that we could have a huge impact! We made an impact study int he US market a few months ago and we have very encouraging figures

For instance, 94% of Yuka users declare that they put back the products when they have a red rating in the app. We are also going to launch a new feature in the app to give back the power to consumers (the launch is for November, but maybe I could talk about it a bit before)

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