#107 - YVES ROCHER - Bris Rocher - Président

Yes, of course. Hello. So, I'm 42, a father of three. Initially, I wasn't passionate about music—I was passionate about jazz. I love that style for many reasons. That's what excited me as a kid. I wanted to do that, but it obviously didn't work out well. When you say you studied for it? No, I didn't study. I played, that's it. I was passionate about it. But I lost my father when I was 16, so I stopped school and joined the family group at that time. Why? Partly because I had just finished my French baccalaureate, and I was curious—it was my father who had taken over as CEO, and I could see he was invested and passionate. I wanted to see behind the scenes. The second reason was lineage: my grandfather created the company, my father took it over, so I wanted to join. I did join and became addicted.

Well, actually my grandfather started me in accounting—not very glamorous, but not useless. Then I moved through different departments: legal, management control. I left the family business for a while to work at Arthur Andersen, which was an experience in itself because I witnessed the end of Arthur Andersen live due to the Enron scandal. That was very interesting. Then I rejoined the family business in 2003. I became CEO in 2006, and my grandfather passed away in 2009, so I became Chairman and CEO at that time.

Since I had worked in the company before my stint at Arthur Andersen, I had a strong relationship with the directors. We formed a trio, so to speak. I formally rejoined as Vice Chairman of the Board in 2003 and became CEO in 2006. It happened naturally. I focused on a few issues, especially capital control, since the family only owned 30% of the capital. In the 1970s, my grandfather had serious health problems and thought he was dying. The company was a small SME, and he wanted to protect his family, so he sold the company in two stages to a well-known pharmaceutical group, Sanofi, while retaining control through a capital structure. Years later, in 1998, Sanofi decided to exit the beauty sector because they were merging with another pharmaceutical company, Synthélabo, which was owned by L'Oréal, making L'Oréal an indirect shareholder. Five days before the merger, after negotiating 19 protocols, Sanofi's chairman called my grandfather—I was in the room—and said they had decided to keep the shares in the Groupe Rocher, making L'Oréal an indirect shareholder. So we went to court to have the shares sequestered. We lost in the first instance, but won on appeal for the direct stake. The whole affair ended in 2012. We bought everything back, so the family now owns 100% of the group.

There are about ten brands within the Groupe Rocher, the most well-known being Yves Rocher, and also Petit Bateau. Others include an American brand, Arbon, Daniel Jouvance, Dr. Pierre Ricaud, etc. It's a group of 18,000 people, internationalized rapidly over the last 10 years. Our second market is the United States, representing about 15% of revenue. France is about 25%. So it's very international. We have 4,200 points of sale worldwide, in over 100 countries. One characteristic is that we are not a DNVB, but a BNVB—Brittany Native Vertical Brand. We are vertical: we harvest, manufacture, and sell. We have diversified our distribution channels. So about 10 brands, 18,000 employees, 4,200 stores, over 100 countries.

There's a deep trend: the consumer now buys brands and wants to make their brand a vehicle for their own purpose. A brand's legitimacy is to meet consumer expectations. Today, the consumer votes—not with a ballot, but with their credit card. That's from Alexandre Mars. It applies to all industries. It's no longer a question; it's a must. Brands must be increasingly committed. The consumer no longer wants to be told stories; they want the brand to prove its values are compatible with theirs. That means moving from the era of storytelling to the era of storydoing. Brands are essentially condemned to meet consumer expectations. A company only thrives if it has customers. I strongly advocate the Pacte Law developed by Macron's government, which pushes companies toward becoming mission-driven and turning commitments into action.

COVID didn't change anything; it accelerated existing trends. We didn't discover CSR with COVID, nor omnichannel. COVID just accelerated what was already there.

First, when developing any company, you need to bring something unique—develop a singularity. If it's just doing what others do, it doesn't make sense. But also, if you're a startup starting from scratch, start immediately as a mission-driven company, go for B Corp certification. In five years, people will only consume those brands. The consumer increasingly includes mission in purchasing criteria, along with price and delivery. But it's not just about the consumer. I attended the Rencontres Économiques d'Aix-en-Provence last year, and there was a debate: one side said you need to be committed because that's what the consumer wants; the other side said purchasing power is key—if you're committed, it adds cost and reduces purchasing power. My deep conviction is that you must meet consumer expectations, but also, a mission-driven company questions its purpose and defines its own fight. A company only thrives with customers, but it only exists because of people—talent. The purpose is a reason to be there or not. Since we spend two-thirds of our lives at work, if it's just to endure, we wither. But if we are engaged and motivated by the fight, we take pleasure, and pleasure and engagement enable performance, which ultimately meets consumer expectations. So it's a whole: it serves consumers, employees, and shareholders, because for shareholders, purpose is a strategic roadmap.

First, a remark on Danone: don't crystallize everything around Emmanuel Faber. Danone is not just Emmanuel Faber; there's a board of directors, chaired by him. The board chose the project, not the person carrying it. That's fundamental. Danone is still a mission-driven company even if Emmanuel Faber is no longer CEO, and he fully assumes that—he posted on LinkedIn exactly what I just said. Now, there is an issue, I don't deny it. I had a debate on Clubhouse yesterday with Olivia Grégoire, who was the president of the commission on the Pacte Law. She is working at the European level on a response to this: we need to develop extra-financial accounting at the European level to reconcile these things. Otherwise, there will always be activist shareholders trying to disrupt. But in the end, when I see that the chairman of BlackRock—not a small fund—wrote to all managers that they must take into account CSR because it's tomorrow's goodwill, eventually activist funds will converge. For that, we need extra-financial accounting. I applaud Olivia Grégoire's work on this, and it must be done at the European level because different rules across countries are complex for companies. What reassures me is that the role of the company has evolved profoundly over the last 30 years: we had the age of patronage (just economic performance, then added philanthropy but it was the CEO's pet project, not aligned with business model), then the CSR era (responding to regulatory constraints, more suffered and constrained), and now the era of the mission-driven company (questioning its purpose and turning it into concrete actions). We will continue to evolve by developing extra-financial accounting. Imagine what we'll do in the next 30 years.

It's clearly the second path. Our mission, simplified at the group level—this corporate purpose—addresses first the employees. The mission is to reconnect women and men with nature. Why? Because we drew this purpose from the roots of the company through my grandfather's personal experience. As I mentioned, he always had serious health problems, so his parents had to homeschool him, creating a very close bond with his father. But at age 14, he lost his father. It was a family tragedy. It's 1944 in a small village in Brittany, not many distractions. That's where the company's story begins.

At Yves Rocher, we have plant enthusiasts: botanists, harvesters, phycologists—true experts. It starts with the botanical garden in La Gacilly, with over 1,500 species, open to the public. Then we have our own manufacturing units where we create creams, shampoos, etc. We also have our own fields certified organic. We manage the entire chain: we have about ten emblematic plants in Brittany, and for others we source worldwide through 250 plant supply chains. Our primary source is in Brittany. 85% of what we buy is manufactured in Brittany. We have three factories there, producing over 100 million units per year. The group employs 18,000 people globally, with around 4,000 in Brittany. We also handle distribution through multiple channels: retail stores (owned, franchised, etc.) and social selling, which has become our first distribution channel ahead of stores during the pandemic.

I don't sell directly; it's independent consultants—ambassadors who buy products at a 20-40% discount and resell them on Facebook, Instagram, etc. It's the same model as Tupperware parties, but done on social media. With the health crisis, we saw two phenomena: first, stores closed for over a quarter, so zero revenue from them; second, social selling skyrocketed because people were socially distanced but wanted connection. It's a way to converse at a distance and build communities beyond geographic proximity. It worked extremely well, and social selling became our top channel.

Stores and social selling are complementary because they deliver different experiences. If we focus on retail, we need to understand the type: Yves Rocher boutiques are 50–100 square meters in city centers, very different from large retailers. Our unique feature is that in 40 square meters we offer a global beauty range—skincare, haircare, body care, makeup, fragrance, hygiene, sun care—no other brand does that. Second, we are not luxury, so our stores must be self-selling: clear merchandising and signage so customers can understand and buy without needing interaction. But we do provide expert advice on core care products. Third, we have spa cabins in all French stores, which are inherently digital-proof. And fourth, our customer relation is consistently top-ranked; the beauty advisor relationship has been central since my grandfather founded the brand to democratize beauty, initially through mail order. An anecdote: a customer wrote to me years ago after her mother's death—she found an Yves Rocher mailing and cried because it reminded her of her mother, a Moroccan immigrant for whom the only letter addressed to her was the Yves Rocher catalog. That shows the emotional connection.

The fundamentals are the same. One singularity is authenticity: we can reveal the backstage because we do so much behind the scenes. Customers recognize that and it creates loyalty. During the crisis, when stores were closed, customers moved to e-commerce, giving us triple-digit growth. When stores reopened, customers came back—the loyalty is incredible. For example, when large shopping centers over 20,000 sq m closed, we had 230 stores in malls shut, but in remaining stores we saw 30% like-for-like growth because customers shifted from mall stores to city-center ones, even with curfews limiting hours to 5:30 PM.

We didn't change because CRM is in our DNA. We have genes of mail-order business since 1959. We track spontaneous revenue and CRM-provoked revenue. We send postcards to customers to incentivize them to come into stores. This has driven like-for-like store growth for the last ten years; we are one of the rare retailers to achieve that. It's not only CRM but also the quality of the beauty advisor relationship, the brand's authenticity, being a family group committed to territory and employment, being ecological before it was trendy, and defending consumer purchasing power. All these foundations give the brand a special flavor.

Thank you, see you soon.