PLACES OF SALE, PLACES OF LIFE: What future for retail?
Martine FUXA - editor in chief of e-marketing
A word about the company
Retail communication group. We do merchandising for luxury brands. We animate and decorate the communication environments of luxury brands for their stores: window displays, advertising, printed materials, and also digital media.
Can you explain to us the trends that you perceive in terms of point of sale animation, more specifically in the luxury world?
We are lucky to have multinational clients, luxury groups that are based all over the world. The main trend is to be able to work on projects from the Head quarter, from the central office, i.e. Paris, Milan, Geneva and all the central offices of these major accounts. Then to be able to offer them local production solutions for local markets, so this is the CSR trend to be able to save in terms of carbon footprint on our productions. More and more brands are asking us to be able to offer local production solutions with a global multinational project and this is our strategy and our ambition to accompany our customers all over the world with the same level of quality and requirement.
Okay, you have this specification of being global and being able to propose solutions everywhere in the world, can you explain us your recent projects, what you are the most proud of recently?
Well, we've obviously integrated complementary know-how. We regularly take over companies that join the group to bring expertise and complementary skills. For example, we have launched a vent activity to accompany the launch of our clients' perfumes. A year ago, we also took over two companies in the gifts field to make gift items for our customers, which also complement our ability to promote brands at the point of sale. These are new businesses that are now growth drivers for our traditional activities.
Okay, in terms of events, can you give us an example of this activity, how it fits in?
We did an event for Guerlain, a big event that they did on the top floor of Beaubourg, where they brought in all the big influencers of the world to communicate on the launch of their new perfume. We did the whole event and the production for Guerlain.
Okay, I guess it's custom-made and it's very high level! Very well, can you explain us in which countries you are present today? Where are your offices and production sites?
So we are a group of 450 people, we are present in 8 countries with essentially in Europe with France where we have the head office. In Ile de France where we have quite a few workshops, production units. We are also present in the Drôme, in Valence with a manufacturing unit for window decorations.
We have a presence in Switzerland, one in Germany and one in Belgium where we have teams of 5 to 10 people depending on the case and the proximity of the customer and also production.
Then we have a presence in China where we have many of our activities that do sourcing and production monitoring. We have about thirty people in our team who work for productions that are then sent on behalf of our customers around the world.
Ok very well then, can we have an idea David Chantepie of your development projects? Because you said you had a lot of external growth, you buy companies, the value chain is structured around the animation of the point of sale of events.
So for us the ambition is clearly to be able to set up in countries where we are not yet present because our clients ask us to accompany them to have an international presence, so today we have a good presence in Europe, one in Asia that we will complete. We have sent digital teams today to Singapore, Hong Kong and China to be able to support our clients in their digital initiatives in Asia.
Then we also have an ambition to establish ourselves in the Middle East. We have two target countries that I can tell you about: Dubai and Saudi Arabia. We have concrete projects, particularly in the world of perfume and cosmetics, which is our first client sector.
Dubai is a country that drives the whole of the Middle East where we have a good production capacity partner, so we are going to set up a business for the RC group by sending teams. We also have a partner in Saudi Arabia because it is a special market where we need to be local Saudi to be able to operate and develop our merchandising know-how on the networks of Saudi Arabian stores which are in strong development because the country is opening up.
Then we also have a strategic ambition in North America with specific ideas of setting up in New York to be able to spread our influence in a commercial proximity at first and then in production for European brands that are massively present in America.
This way, you can concretely accompany your brands in all continents. Precisely because of this richness and this international presence, are there any specificities in the animation of the points of sale?
In addition, there are specificities in countries or zones where you have specific animations by zone: Dubai, we were present two weeks ago with one of our partners who made an animation for Dior fashion, the couture which was for Ramadan. It is an animation that was only for the environment so our teams are able to make local animations on a theme of an initiative and that we are used to and have the agility to do that.
Finally, David Chantepie, can you tell me about the group's objectives in terms of CSR?
We have great ambitions, and it's part of our strategic ambitions to deploy our CSR activities. We have a 2025 plan called Responsible for Change with the RC Group on which we have focused all our teams who are actively working on the project with steering committees that meet every month. CSR has been deployed around a few major ambitions.
First of all, social and societal issues, so we are essentially working on supporting our teams. Human capital: we are trying to deploy it, so we have set up a company academy, for example, to develop talent. We have deployed an HR policy at group level, we have supported our teams' social benefits with the coverage of 100% of the mutual insurance for our employees. We also had an HR barometer done to find out what our teams think. Today, this is what makes the difference in our luxury environment, along with commitment and excellence.
Our capital is essentially human, so that's the main thing, and of course we are working on the environment. In particular on the reduction of our carbon footprint. We did another carbon assessment last year and we have ambitions to reduce our footprint with initiatives that are done locally or at the group level to reduce this carbon footprint by 30% by 2025. This requires setting up resources with teams that work on these subjects and also significant investments in terms of industry. We have many projects underway to be a corporate citizen and also respond to the request of our customers who are large groups that are extremely advanced on CSR issues. We have to be number 1 on CSR aspects.