Dive Brief:

• French flash-sales site Vente-Privee.com has partnered with American Express since 2011 to bring its business to the United States.

• Jacques-Antoine Granjon founded his flash-sale company in 2001 and inspired U.S. competitors like Amazon’s MyHabit, Gilt Groupe, Groupon’s Ideeli, fab.com, and others, many of which have moved away from the model due to falling sales. Granjon, however, sees the U.S. as full of potential for the model and believes that Vente-Privee will continue to find success here.

• Retailers in France famously can only hold sales twice a year, leaving an opening for Vente-Privee to succeed by selling high-quality designer merchandise at significant discounts.

Dive Insight:

Vente-Privee founder Granjon believes his flash-sales company will continue to find success in the States where others haven’t because his model creates a sense of urgency that others don’t. He is critical of the way U.S. retailers, including flash-sales sites, mark up prices and call regular retail price a “sale.” And how they often drop prices even further, creating a sense among consumers that they can wait for yet another drop.

In addition to busting through that tangle of price drops upon price drops, Granjon says his model will include brick-and-mortar stores as key partners.

“Of the consumers who use the site, 40% of them go and shop in the real stores of the brands,” he told Fortune magazine. “We don’t believe that digital is the only solution for the future. The future is click and mortar, and we are a click-and-mortar company.”