Shopping for brand-name products with exclusive discounts and enjoying a complimentary dinner at a fancy restaurant — that’s what a day in the life can look like for members of Kyiv’s U Princess club.
And the only requirements for the membership card is to be a beautiful and stylish woman. There’s no other fee.
“We had as many as 2,000 members but we decided to cut down a little bit just to make certain that the people were extremely outstanding,” Dutch businessman Elliot de la Valiere, the club’s founder, told the Kyiv Post. “The most beautiful girls in the city.”
U Princess now has 1,250 members. They are mostly 21- to 24-year-old women, many of whom do modeling either professionally or as a hobby and have numerous followers on social media.
The club cooperates with about 35 brands that want these women to promote their products both online and in their personal circles.
De la Valiere’s club connects the two groups and collects a commission from the brands on most of the sales that the so-called princesses make.
“If general customers out there in the marketplace are general army soldiers, U Princess is very similar to the special forces,” de la Valier said.
But the U Princess club is not without controversy. Some find the practice of selecting members based upon appearance outdated and unethical. Others worry that the club furthers the stereotype that Ukrainian women are attractive, easy and drawn to wealth and luxury.
Business model
De la Valiere came to Ukraine in 2005. He held a number of jobs in Kyiv, from selling private jets to developing Pokupon, a company that provides discount coupons for all kinds of products and services.
He founded U Princess in 2013 after coming up with a business model that he claims nobody had used before: connecting companies to their desired segment of the market and turning a profit while doing it.
He says that clothing, shoe and accessory brands often give out their products to influencers and attractive people in return for promotion. But such an approach is not foolproof.
“Even if you pay models and give them free clothes, there is no guarantee they will wear it in their normal life. They may prefer to wear different clothes,” he said.
U Princess, however, gave brands an opportunity to reach their desired audience and still earn from it — just a little less and with a guarantee that the consumers will wear their products.
“Because nobody would (pay) even 30% of the price if they aren’t willing to wear it,” the founder said.
About the same time, de la Valiere came across interesting statistics that the customers who spent the most at Brocard, a luxury cosmetics and perfume store chain, were “very beautiful women.”
“The combination of understanding what brands wanted, the client segment, and what was the more profitable segment gave me this idea,” he said.
After de la Valiere started U Princess, the club attracted its first 100 members in two months. Over the years, the club grew to have 2,000 members, only to later cut it off at 1,250 — “the most beautiful girls,” de la Valiere said.
The founder says that the club card can’t be purchased; it is only held by those women who have been selected. To enter U Princess, the potential members must fill out a questionnaire online and send their pictures. Some of them are then invited to an interview with the club’s three-person admission committee, which sometimes includes de la Valiere.
“They know who is more desirable (to) brands,” he said.
The main requirements of applicants are to be beautiful and stylish, as is noted on the club’s website.
When asked how they define beauty and style, de la Valiere is succinct: “We just try.”
However, he also adds that women have to be “decent” to be accepted. If U Princess members engage in questionable practices — for example, accepting money for attending parties organized for men abroad, some of which involve sex — they will be removed from the club.
U Princess club members visit the Liu Jo store in Kyiv that cooperates with the club and gives discounts to its members. (U Princess/ facebook)
Privileges
In the beginning, the club offered its princesses free dinners at a number of Kyiv restaurants, free entrance and drinks at the City Beach Club and discounts for branded products and beauty salons.
Former club member Kateryna Kukhta, a 24-year-old marketing specialist, says that the princesses weren’t obliged to do anything in return except look good, preferably wearing heels and dresses, as they met with the brands or visited restaurants.
Free meals for attractive women is believed to be a popular practice in Kyiv. There are reportedly other club cards that widely cooperate with restaurants: their female members receive complimentary drinks and food and help attract a male clientele.
U Princess used to receive commissions from restaurants for such cooperation, too. But de la Valiere says that the goal wasn’t to attract men but to make the restaurants more prestigious. However, this practice attracted negative media coverage, so U Princess toned it down about three years ago.
Today, the founder says, five Kyiv restaurants offer complimentary dinners for the princesses, but U Princess receives no commissions and it’s the restaurants’ own initiative. He also says that the club members “can’t be bothered” by men there. According to de la Valiere, the list includes Avalon, Mocco, Coin and Normal.
The Coin restaurant, which belongs to former restaurateur and now lawmaker Mykola Tyshchenko, told the Kyiv Post they used to cooperate with U Princess but they have ended it.
“We value our guests regardless their gender, and in no way segment them by the ‘beautiful’ — ‘not beautiful’ principle,” the restaurant’s marketing specialist Oleksiy Lebedev said.
As for the brands, the princesses receive up to 50% discounts for clothes, shoes, accessories, cosmetics and jewelry from around 35 brands, with whom the club cooperates. De la Valiere says that they include Philipp Plein, Cavalli, Bvlgari, United Colors of Benetton, Mango, Liu Jo, Tiffany and more.
The club, meanwhile, earns commissions on every purchase the princesses make. De la Valiere refused to disclose the commission rate. However, he says that the club doesn’t make much in Ukraine. It is rather an experiment that they used to test the model and start a similar company in the Netherlands about two years ago. There, he says, women spend much more, which allows the club to make a bigger profit.
Controversy
But if U Princess provides its members with benefits, some feel it also advances longstanding stereotypes that Ukrainian women are attractive, easily approachable and sometimes even “for sale.”
Kyiv’s clubs and eateries are packed with foreigners who come here for sex or dating tourism, and websites extol the virtues of getting a Ukrainian wife.
This stereotype has often provoked controversy. When President Volodymyr Zelensky called Ukrainian women one of the country’s brands during a visit to France in June, many Ukrainian women started an online flashmob expressing outrage over the comment.
But de la Valiere says that U Princess doesn’t contribute to the stereotypical perception of Ukrainian women. Rather, it empowers its members.
He claims that members of the U Princess community support each other, and their participation in the club gives them financial independence.
“It’s good when a girl is able to buy something for her(self) without needing a lot of money,” he said.
Alina Pigun, a 29-year-old lawyer who has been in the club for six years, says that she very much enjoys the sizeable discounts on new collections by international fashion brands.
“There are more privileges than for ordinary customers,” she told the Kyiv Post. “It’s a very rare case.”
However, it’s not the privileges the club offers, but to whom it offers them that causes concern. Sasha Golub, a lawyer at the Harmony of Equals nonprofit, says the concept of the “most beautiful” women and extreme beauty standards seem very outdated today.
“What is female beauty and who defines its standards? Why would any questionable company determine which women are beautiful and which are not?” she told the Kyiv Post.
Oleksii Popov, the deputy CEO for marketing at the multibrand retail network Argo, says his organization cooperates with U Princess because it is an active consumer audience.
“We get prompt feedback from club members,” Popov said. “This is a good example of win-win collaboration.”
Other companies, however, refuse to publicly admit ties to U Princess.
One of them, Brocard, told the Kyiv Post that it does not cooperate with the club. Rather, it claims that the club’s team simply bought gift cards for its members.
However, according to Pigun, at least some of the princesses get a 50% discount for products sold in Brocard. De la Valiere also said that Brocard was the club’s cooperating partner. However, after the Kyiv Post reached out to Brocard, De la Valiere denied that, saying that Brocard is correct.
Activist Golub says that the practice of using leaders and recognizable people to promote a particular product is absolutely normal. But exact approach matters.
“While global brands and international celebrities are promoting respect for diversity and body positivity, Ukrainian companies are still use marketing practices of the past century, where a woman is an object or a piece of decor,” she said.
