Society Pass spins off luxury e-tailer arm as Leflair Group

Society Pass, a Vietnam-based tech firm incorporated in the US, has spun off its luxury ecommerce retail brand as Leflair Group in a restructuring of the unit’s operations.

Photo credit: Leflair

Society Pass has also appointed Leflair co-founder Loic Gautier as CEO of the new entity. Ngo Thi Cham, the Vietnam country head of Society Pass and managing director of Leflair, will be Leflair Group’s COO.

The Leflair Group will acquire e-commerce, lifestyle retail, and online advertising companies in a bid to expand from a single luxury fashion platform to a “lifestyle retail ecosystem” in Southeast Asia, stated the company.

Since its listing on the Nasdaq last year, Society Pass has been working on a new strategy for Leflair, said Ray Liang, CFO of Society Pass Group. He said the new strategy will maximize Leflair’s “potential as a destination for lifestyle shopping in Southeast Asia.”

Society Pass last year acquired and relaunched the Leflair brand founded by Gautier and Pierre-Antoine Brun, both former Lazada executives.

The ecommerce retailer had shut down and filed for bankruptcy in 2020 due to issues related to capital and operations. Gautier had been summoned by Vietnamese authorities after suppliers alleged that the startup had failed to pay them their dues.

Moving forward, Gautier will be responsible for expanding the Leflair platform into other Southeast Asian countries and managing the retailer’s acquisitions.

See also: Lessons from the fall of luxury e-tailer Leflair

Meanwhile, former Society Pass CTO Rahul Narain is seeking US$1.3 million in compensation from the company for alleged breach of his employment contract. He filed a lawsuit before the New York State Supreme Court in 2019.

Narain alleges that the Vietnam-based company failed to pay him in full for his service as an advisor and consultant at the firm before he took on the CTO job.