Pile ou Face ('Heads or Tails' in English), a shop that sells displaced Amazon parcels, has opened its doors in Brussels and Wavre. With up to 1,000 sales every weekend, the business has seen outstanding success in recent weeks.
At Pile ou Face, customers do not know what is inside the packages they purchase. This lottery system can leave them with anything from simple decorative objects to smartphones.
While relatively uncommon, parcels sometimes fail to arrive at their destination for a variety of reasons. These include mistakes made during delivery, wrong addresses and unclaimed deliveries, which generally end up in the hands of large companies in the supply chain.
Pile ou Face founder Arnaud Userstam and his wife began to wonder about the fate of Amazon's lost parcels. They thought misplaced deliveries should be given another chance when they found out that a large majority of lost parcels was destroyed.
Credit: Pile ou Face / Facebook
This is exactly what their business aims to do: ease congestion in warehouses while passing on the benefits to consumers. After lengthy negotiations between the company and e-commerce multinational Amazon, a contract was finally drawn up.
"85% of the parcels on sale come from Amazon," Userstam told The Brussels Times. With stocks selling like hot cakes, Pile ou Face recently placed a new order for "at least 100,000 parcels."
This market, which has become much more popular thanks to social media, already existed before in Belgium, with a few shops selling items from other e-commerce platforms such as Aliexpress, Alibaba, Temu or Shein.
€16 per kilo
The concept follows a simple principle. Customers choose their parcels, give them a shake and wonder at the contents, but are not allowed to open them. A kilo of parcels costs just €16. They can then find all sorts of items, and it is often unpredictable, the founder explained.
"Among some of the most unwrapped items were electronic products such as wireless headphones or smartwatches, and even sex toys. A few were lucky enough to come across smartphones. One woman even got 100 dog toothbrushes. But the most expensive item unpacked so far is a Moncler jacket, worth about €1,500".
As well as the element of surprise, the advantage for customers is receiving an item for less than its original value. However, since nothing is guaranteed, those taking a gamble have to accept the risk of losing out.
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In addition, the practice stimulates environmentally-friendly shopping. By giving a second chance to products that would otherwise be destroyed, the initiative reduces unnecessary production.
With at least 500 people per day coming to the stores, the founder told The Brussels Times that the chain plans to expand, with the opening of a franchise shop in Mons and two new shops in Brussels in early April.
For more information on Pile ou Face and opening times, see here.
