Sophie Paris is without a doubt one of the most successful multi-level-marketing companies to hit Indonesia. The fashion, beauty and healthy-living company, headquartered in Jakarta, now has millions of members in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Morocco, and it plans to expand to other countries. But business was not always so rosy for the retail giant.
“We started from zero,” said French national Bruno Hasson, founder and chief executive of Sophie Paris. Hasson and his wife, Sophie Martin, started the business — now worth millions of dollars — in the garage of their home in Cipete, South Jakarta, in 1995.
“I was selling farming machines in Jakarta at that time,” said Hasson. “But it was not my passion.”
The couple came up with the idea of starting their own business, but were initially at loss of