Le Café des Lyonnes Ep 112 - Emmanuel Gasnot

I think I am an engaged man. It is something very natural for me. Engagement is something that is understood both personally and professionally. It means not doing things halfway, doing things with sincerity. I think personal and professional engagement are closely linked. You cannot pretend. So you never do things thoroughly enough, but I strive to do so and to be very sincere in my approach. When you have had the chance to acquire some responsibilities, you have a duty of sincerity and engagement towards the teams and colleagues you work with, to contribute daily, motivate them, accomplish the most beautiful things together, help people grow, and grow yourself. So yes, I think I am an engaged person, even if one can never be engaged enough. But I am.

These are questions that must be asked, that must never be forgotten. Paradoxically, in our market of hairdressing, where I have been evolving for 37 years since the beginning of my career, there is a risk of not asking these good questions because it is our daily life. We work with women. The company, including the offices, is composed of more than 75% women. In the salons, it is certainly between 80 and 85%. So the place of women is preponderant. But whether it is appreciated and respected at its true value is another matter. So we strive for that. It is my daily life, very natural. I constantly ask myself this question, or at least I strive never to forget it. I am not a woman, I cannot have a woman's experience. I can imagine it is very hard to be a woman in this society, even if things have evolved, but there is still much to do. However, we truly strive, in a very natural way, to free speech, free action, and not to make a difference between men and women. Our executive committee is composed mostly of women, and that is very good. The board of directors has two men. Why not a woman tomorrow? I would like to be led by a woman; it has already happened to me, and I have absolutely no problem with that.

I wasn't there, but from the stories I've been told and which I believe, and I want to believe even more, it wasn't necessarily he who wanted to create this brand. I think it was a woman who created it, named Jeanne Dureux, who had worked for many years with Jacques Dessange. I don't have the whole story, but I think she persuaded Jacques Dessange to create a second brand alongside Dessange, a brand with its own values, its own reason for existing, and imbued with the strong personality of Jeanne Dureux, whom I had the opportunity to know indirectly. I was a supplier to the brand Camille Albane. So Jeanne Dureux, working with Jacques Dessange, together they created the brand Camille Albane. Camille: I'll repeat what I was told, but I think it's 100% true. Camille was the name she used when she worked in the salon. Very probably there was already a Jeanne when she arrived at the Dessange salon where she worked, so often when two people have the same first name, you give a name to the second person who arrives. So that's certainly what happened with Jeanne, who was called Camille in a very natural way. And Albane: the story goes that at the time of creating the brand, there was no internet, no social networks, no Google, so things were a bit simpler. They still worked a lot with the telephone directory. Together they decided it would be good to find a name that would appear quickly in the directory, so it had to start with A. They came across Albane, they certainly found that Camille Albane worked very well, and it works great. The simplest things are the most effective. I don't have proof that it's true, but I think it's true, and I really want to believe it because I love this story.

Ah, but I wasn't strong enough for that, so the dream quickly faded. I searched for a long time. I wanted to work in commerce. There was something that always interested me. I remember my mother asking me one day what I wanted to do. I said I want to work with people, because I feel I can sense what people feel and try to not take advantage in a negative sense, but try to put people in the best conditions to work. I fundamentally like people. I didn't know yet what I wanted to do. I went into commerce, started working in ready-to-wear after my military service. Then I was dating a hairdresser whose parents and whole family were hairdressers. Through that, I entered a product company, where I stayed for 20 years. A few years later, in the late 1990s, early 2000s, it became the supplier of Camille Albane. So I have 37 years of career in hairdressing this year. I often say that hairdressing has given me everything. And Camille Albane is the brand that brought me everything, because thanks to Camille Albane, when the brand I worked for became a supplier to Camille Albane, it allowed me to get to know the group, Jeanne Dureux, Mr. Dessange, the Dessange family, the people who made up this group, to enter directly into contact with them. At that time, only Dessange franchisees could open a Camille Albane salon; it was not allowed for an outsider. So I got to know this group very well from the inside. So this group, this brand Camille Albane, I owe everything to. I owe everything to hairdressing and everything to Camille Albane in my professional life. So I am in love with this brand.

I really like the way you ask this question, because it is often asked a bit differently. Often people start by saying 'you are franchisors,' and I always correct them. I say I am not a franchisor, I am a hairdresser. We are hairdressers. Our job is hairdressing, and we have a business model that is franchising, which allowed this group to develop. That is our whole history. To answer your question, it is very simple. As long as we evolve and feel very comfortable in this environment of hairdressing, it is very natural. Gradually, the group even sold the salons it owned to franchisees, to brand ambassadors as I like to call them, to avoid any conflict of interest with our brand partners. Everything we do and develop is 100% dedicated to the service of our brands and our franchisees, who are ultimately independent entrepreneurs who chose a brand because the brand resembles them and they identify with it. Together with them, we must develop the best tools so that their businesses develop, so that they can work in a context that allows them to flourish, along with their collaborators, and that they feel good and recognize themselves in a profession they are passionate about. It is a sharing that is never sufficient because everyone is spread out all over France and in a few countries. But we make sure to always gather what our franchisees need, what we estimate they may need, while always taking into account innovations and market evolutions.

We always work on these subjects. It is part of the education we provide. That is why it is not about making a difference, because for me it is a whole: both the professional expertise and the behavioral expertise and attitude. The simple fact that a brand like Camille Albane has among its great values, which we like a lot and which define us perfectly, to know how to accompany and reveal, liberate the beauty of women so that they feel strong, feel good. We talk both about our clients who push the door of a Camille Albane salon and everything we must convey and communicate to invite them to come see us. But it goes without saying that to be able to do that, we must put the people who work at Camille Albane, mostly women but not only, in the best conditions. It would be extremely pretentious to say that we have a particular approach or reflection for women, because there are practically only women. So if you come to the training center, there is a majority of women, and it is something natural. And because it is natural, maybe we don't do enough. In any case, it is a question we must ask ourselves constantly and must address with all teams. Yes, certainly. It could be a facility to say we don't have to make efforts because there are only women, mostly women in our profession. That is perhaps the biggest trap we could fall into. Have we fallen into it? I don't have that feeling, but it could be very interesting to question the women who make up the group at various levels. In any case, we are committed to constantly honoring women. And when we talk about honoring women to make them feel good and talk about our consumers, our clients who push the door of our salons, it is impossible to achieve that if the salon collaborators are not in the same disposition and if we haven't done everything to put them in the same dispositions. Do we achieve it perfectly? No, perfection doesn't exist, so certainly not. Is it a constant concern? Yes, and it certainly must be even more so from the point of view of women, taking into account the feminine cause. That is certain.

No, it's a profession, it's a super open profession. Everything is possible. But in the same way you spoke earlier about women in public debate, we sometimes have a tendency to expect too much from people above us, whether they are high officials or politicians. Of course we have much to expect from them and there are strong convictions to put forward, but I think we should not always wait for people above us. It is something we must take responsibility for ourselves. It is everyone's business, starting with education. That is very important. Acting on the education that parents give to children is very presumptuous, it is very hard, but it is something that culturally must become ingrained. I have the impression it is getting a little better, but I am not a woman and I don't live it from the inside, so it is certainly never fast enough. But why do I talk about education? Because it is also our whole problem in hairdressing. To return to your question, it is trying to do everything, and that is what Jacques Dessange and Jeanne Dureux, Camille Albane, and all the people who have worked in this group since its creation and continue to work in it do: to be dedicated to this fabulous profession of hairdressing, at our humble level to try to elevate this profession, to value it, and to return to education, it is trying to give a little more confidence to parents when their children want to do hairdressing, and encourage them to do hairdressing, and not to go into hairdressing as a kind of fallback or result of academic failure. It is a fabulous profession. We have many examples among our brand ambassadors at Camille Albane and Dessange of very beautiful successes: people who have opened their own salon, people who work inside salons, who work in training for us, who do many jobs. The advice I would give to young girls and young women, we have quite a few reconversions lately, people who after perhaps having had difficulties or having been accompanied to start hairdressing, left for other paths and come back. But whatever the age of the person, if this profession attracts you, do it, go for it. In France, we can always be very critical of the professional level, but we have the chance, and I have the chance to visit many countries and know a bit what happens elsewhere. There are countries that are very well organized where education works very well, but in France we have an educational system that we never stop criticizing in hairdressing, but honestly it is rather very effective, very good, it forms very good professionals, we have very good hairdressers. So I can only encourage them. If that's what you want to do, you talked about engagement earlier, it's part of your engagement. Feel good, go to the end of your passion, your dream if it's hairdressing. And if you think we can help you, we are here for that, we have the people for that. So take contact with us, because we will be able to allow you to realize yourself, perhaps before realizing your dream, but to realize yourself and give you the best possible conditions to flourish. It's a fabulous profession, so come see us. There are not only us, without any pretension.

Wow, that's the last question, but it's extremely difficult. It's a difficult question. I would like, I don't want to beat around the bush, I don't necessarily have the perfect answer. I would like us to one day no longer have to ask this question, even if the question of women and men will always be asked. What bothers me a little sometimes is that I have the feeling that when we try to put women forward, some people think we are doing it to look good or to feel good about ourselves, and we continue to question the real added value, when there is no question to ask. Everyone sees that women have had a more difficult path than men for many reasons, and women are a thousand times more relevant than men in public debates, as we talked about earlier. If I had a magic wand, I don't know, I don't know if we should do something specific for women. What I would like is for it to become very natural. I would like women to be able to access the highest responsibilities. And in this period of political turmoil, if I had a magic wand, I would like a woman to be at the head of our country or at the head of the government, because I think that would put the church back in the middle of the village and would allow us to see things in a more effective, more peaceful way, and would certainly be a guarantee of development for our country.