The L'Oréal Adventure

François Dalle

• Publisher: Odile Jacob
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9782738150202
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Today, it is difficult to imagine that in 1948 L'Oréal was just another small business. In 35 years its turnover went from 200 million to 20 billion francs. This book reveals that factors such as money or classic management techniques played a minor role in L'Oréal's growth. For François Dalle, such expansion was due primarily to the adherence of the entire L'Oréal staff to what he called the "L'Oréal Spirit: " an infusion into the company's "psyche" of a passionate will for conquest and development, associated with indisputable quality and an unquenchable desire to be the first to "seize new opportunities." This is what enabled L'Oréal to diversify its activities, and to expand them throughout Europe, Japan, and both North and South America, and to endure and overcome the crises of the 1970s and 80s. In 1942, François Dalle began working at Monsavon, a small soap-making company that belonged to Eugène Schueller, the founder of L'Oréal. He was made director of L'Oréal in 1948, first working alongside Eugène Schueller, and became president of the company from 1957 to 1985.

PART I

The Monsavon – L’Oréal years

---

---

CHAPTER I

The Dark Years

---

Although I came from a business-oriented family—my father was a brewer in Wervicq, in the north of France—I wanted to be a lawyer. It was by accident that I went into business. It’s true that this “accident”—the war—altered more than one future. The defeat of 1940 occurred at a time when, having obtained my law degree with distinction, I was hoping to attain a teaching certificate. I dreamed of one day being a professor and focusing entirely on my students. The lawyers/professors René Cassin and René Capitant were my role models. Unfortunately, I had to give up that dream after the defeat of our armies, a defeat that had for me been particularly bitter because I had seen it coming. During the summers of 1937 and 1938, I had, in fact, visited Germany with three friends, André Bettencourt, François Mitterrand, and Pol Pilven, all three of whom were from the provinces, like I was, and who were also boarders at 104 rue de Vaugirard while studying in Paris1 . The trip to Germany had been a dismaying opportunity to realize how greatly our country, like many other countries in Europe, was unwittingly threatened by German power. In the Ruhr and the Black Forest we had witnessed ultramodern combat tanks speeding through villages, with the inhabitants cheering and young women tossing flowers at them.

I also remember a scene that had seemed incredible to us. It had occurred not far from the Germany/Luxembourg border, on the banks of the Sauer River. On a huge grandstand, a hundred-piece orchestra was performing military marches. Not far from there, about a thousand soldiers, all in swimsuits, were standing to attention, all lined up on the banks of the river. Trumpets abruptly signaled a command, and all those young men then jumped into the water, all at once. The discipline was impressive and the show of strength terrifying. We sensed the incredible reserves of energy ready to be released, and we naively wondered how our pacifist compatriots and our ragamuffin army of workers would be able to fend them off. Were we really so naïve, though? They say that truth comes out of the mouths of babes, and, in this case, they also said that our military intelligence knew exactly what was going on. I can also remember this very wise statement made by the local Wervicq police in May 1940: “You know, Franchot, the Maginot line is not going to stop the Germans, because they’re going to pass through Holland like they did last time, and we will pay the price.” The high command, that sort of mythical monster to which we referred as we did to Science, didn’t listen. This is a lesson I have never forgotten. “To lend an ear” is a very widespread practice these days, especially among the longest standing politicians. But to take into account what one hears in the making of policy is a completely different story. I think I can say that doing just that—listening and making use of what I heard—was a constant obsession of mine when I was head of L’Oréal. And the shame of a battle lost by my country had a lot to do with that.

Our high command being what it was, in 1940 I was mobilized amidst indescribable chaos, and, like everyone else, I was issued a uniform whose design hadn’t changed since the war of ‘14. It was still embellished, if one might use that term, with those famous putties, long strips of cloth wound spirally around the leg from ankle to knee for protection and support. The concept didn’t always live up to expectations; the strips would fall down around the ankles after taking a few steps. In any case, getting ready took a lot of time, which proved that the uniform hadn’t been conceived to allow the foot soldier free movement and the ability to react quickly if a warning was sounded. I prefer not to describe in detail here what was later, for me, the “strange war,” nor the defeat that followed and which caused me, as well as many of my friends, to cry out in rage. I’ve never forgotten that defeat, either. I recalled it notably on the occasion of a L’Oréal conference I led many years later in Sarre, during which hair stylists from that region gave me a rousing ovation. I had announced that our products were now superior to those of German manufacturers, and that, together, we would do great business. It so happened that this was in 1955 and that ninety-five percent of the people from Sarre had voted in a referendum to again be part of Germany… This proved to me, I believe, that one must be strong to be respected by one’s “cousins,” and even more so to be liked by them.

We were far from those sentiments in 1940. Our cousins had just inflicted on us a resounding defeat, and, to compound the humiliation, they had carved up our country into three zones: in the South, a so-called free zone, administered by Maréchal Pétain, whose headquarters were in Vichy; in the North, a forbidden zone, which meant that it was essentially annexed by the Occupation; in the middle, an occupied zone, which included Paris, which was theoretically overseen by the Vichy government, but where the Germans ruled everything. I had been taken prisoner in the Somme and, after a few days of captivity, I had ingloriously escaped because the Germans had obviously been surprised by how easily their military had advanced and didn’t yet know what to do with all the prisoners they had captured. My first objective was to go to the free zone and, for the better part of a year, I traveled between the free zone and the forbidden zone where my parents had remained. I served as a courier for the people from the North who had sought refuge in the South, who wanted to send messages to people back home. I must say that in the first months of the Occupation, the Germans had not yet acquired sufficient knowledge of the terrain to effectively thwart the crossing of the demarcation lines by a few resolute young people. But, if the probability of being caught was still low, the penalties were formidable: prison, with the impossibility of communicating with anyone. This situation couldn’t last forever, and ultimately I found myself in Paris at the beginning of the autumn of 1941.

I went to the law school, but none of my professors were there. I didn’t know that René Cassin was in London, and no one knew what had become of Capitant; we thought that Léon Julliot de la Morandière was writing a civil code in Brazil. No news either from Georges Ripert ... My professors were no longer there; I felt orphaned. In any case, the mood wasn’t really conducive to the pursuit of lengthy studies, and I really couldn’t allow myself such a luxury since I had recently married. So I decided to look for a job.

First Steps in Business with Monsavon

Having through necessity become a reader of newspaper want ads, one day I saw that the French Société des Savons (French soap company) was offering internships. I learned that it encompassed the Monsavon brand and was directed by Eugène Schueller, whose ideas on “proportional salary” were already widespread throughout France. I, myself, was quite interested in his work, because economic issues were, in the years of crisis that had preceded the war, at the center of all debates in business circles, notably in my family who were supporters of the Christian Socialism tradition upheld by business owners in the north of France. I might add that since I suffered from asthma, in those days I spent a lot of my time in bed reading whatever I could find on the subject.

In the village where we lived, and where all social classes rubbed elbows, it seemed obvious to me, as it did to the other members of my family, that the French economic machine needed to be “jump-started.” There was overproduction because there was under-consumption. The theory that promoted stimulating consumption to avoid overproduction was that of an American automaker, Henry Ford, who had put it into practice in his company. But when I pointed to him as an example, I invariably received the response that France wasn’t America. So I was thrilled to learn that a Frenchman, Eugène Schueller, had decided to adapt Fordism for his purposes. His idea of proportional salary was, in fact, meant to establish a direct link between production and consumption, and to do so at the highest level of the economy, that of a corporation. To me, it was somewhat the philosopher’s stone. Today, the globalization of trade has become the norm, and Ford’s and Schueller’s ideas are considered retro. I believe they will return to their former glory when people come to realize that the famous fundamentals of economics are right, and see the need to have company employees participate in the growth of the economy.

In 1942, in any event, those ideas gave young people like me reasons to prepare for better times to come. General de Gaulle’s call to arms was circulating under wraps. In June 1940, he had predicted that the war would take on global proportions, and two major events had just confirmed his prediction: in June 1941, the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union and, December of the same year, the Japanese attacked the US fleet in Pearl Harbor. And so America would mobilize its formidable military machine while the German army would become bogged down in an immense Russia, as Napoleon’s had done before it. There were then, it seemed to me, sufficient reasons to be confident in the future.

However, for the time being, I had to make a living. André Bettencourt had told me about a conversation he had had a few weeks earlier with Eugène Schueller, following a public lecture Schueller had given on proportional salary. And so it was thanks to André Bettencourt and to the “proportional economy” that I was able to meet my future employer. My encounter with the head of the Société des Savons Français, who was also the founder of L’Oréal, was very brief. I remember what he said, which was understandably quite encouraging: “I’m glad you come from the north of France, because in this country there are two categories of people who work hard: men from the North and Alsatians!” Schueller was from Alsace.

Secretary to a secretary

A few days later, on July 20, 1942, I showed up at an address on rue Martre in Clichy, where Monsavon had both its factory and its offices. As a matter of fact, as can be seen in a photo from that time which I found in my archives, Clichy, on the whole, was quite representative of the miserabilist style of our Parisian suburbs. Rue Martre was around four times narrower than it is today. And so, forty years later, we experienced great satisfaction in contributing to the renewal of this district by establishing the L’Oréal group’s headquarters and offices on the former site of the Monsavon factory.

It goes without saying, however, that in 1942 I was far from having such a vision of the future. I was twenty-four years old and, with a monthly salary that corresponded to half of today’s minimum wage, I was an assistant to the secretary of the director of sales. It was, admittedly, a radical change of direction for someone who had dreamed of a career as a law professor.

The factory buildings were more than dilapidated and seemed to be scattered, without rhyme or reason, amongst a true no man’s land of terraced houses ending up in vacant lots. The offices were sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter because in those times of scarcity, they were obviously not heated. The one I was assigned, a 3m x 1.5m [9’ x 5’] closet, which had one glass wall, was a true hothouse in the summer. The roofs leaked, and the main work room was regularly flooded during every rainstorm. The electricity generator overloaded several times a day, immediately interrupting all activity, and our water supplies were insufficient to ensure ongoing production. Later, when my duties increased, I asked a mason to create a little office next to the cardboard shop. This cramped room, which opened onto a small outdoor courtyard a few meters square, covered with garbage and infested with rats, would be very useful later when I had to hide from the Germans.

I would be lying if I said that at the time I started at Monsavon I was aware of the importance and value of the profession I had chosen to join. The realities were in no way exalting, and I have to admit that my self-esteem often suffered when I found myself relegated to carrying out tasks that seemed utterly subservient. During the first months I was there, my work consisted of tallying the quantity of soap sold at the various prices, in order to calculate the company’s revenue. At the time, Monsavon employed some thirty sales representatives. Each of them took a dozen orders every day. Given that each order contained three or four different items, I had to add around a thousand lines of orders to determine the volume sold in a day. Not being very good at long additions, I divided up the orders and then added them in small batches to obtain the grand total. Naturally, we didn’t have calculators at that time, and everything was done with pencil and eraser on sheets of paper.

One day, while I was laboring in front of my order forms, perpetually dividing and adding the figures, the director of accounting, an important person whom I hadn’t yet met, came into my office. I must have looked particularly miserable when he asked me how my work was going, because he took his own pencil that he always had with him, and in three minutes, without any hesitation or mistakes, and without resorting to the fractionation I used, did the complete addition of the order forms that were on the table. Stupefied, I stammered out my thank you. He looked at me kindly and simply said: “You’ll manage very quickly, you’ll see ... you just have to get the hang of it.” He later became a great friend, but I never did achieve his arithmetic virtuosity. At the end of 1943, in fact, exceptional circumstances—the sales director had a serious illness, and the executive director left mysteriously—quickly propelled me to the head of Monsavon, of which I became the de facto boss. My days of addition were over. I was twenty-five years old.

A spark in the greyness

The company had two very valuable technicians who would subsequently play major roles in L’Oréal’s development. One of them, Félix Lachampt, was a self-made man, but he was a born inventor, who had a passion for studying emulsions. In the 1970s, he created several beauty lotions that were great commercial successes. The second man, John Seemuller, had been head of his class at the École de Physique et Chimie in Paris and had specialized in chemical engineering. Later he became vice president in charge of manufacturing at L’Oréal. At the time, they were obviously both underemployed and sometimes had to undertake tasks well below their abilities. But that didn’t prevent them from thinking; it even inspired them to challenge each other. The result was that one day, they came to tell me that they were thinking about realizing the dream of every soap maker, that is, continuous soap-making. It is amazing that such an innovation could have been conceived in that small business that lacked everything: capital, as well as a stock of materials, supplies, and the most basic parts. Despite those difficulties—or perhaps because of them—I resolved to support their project. In any case, we had nothing to lose, and, on the contrary, everything to gain. In fact, I think that without this invention, which was perfected with laughable means, L’Oréal would not have become what it is today. Born in the midst of the challenges of the Occupation, in a wind-swept factory, the continuous process in soap-making subsequently required lengthy development, but, after the Liberation, it earned us the attention of Procter & Gamble. That American company for a time became a true model for me. We would later transfer our soap-making activities to them, which allowed us to focus on L’Oréal.

A “leader of men” out of necessity

Eugène Schueller used to classify his colleagues into two categories: “leaders of men” and “leaders of things.”...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface - by Jean-Paul Agon
• Foreword
• Part I - The Monsavon – L'Oréal years
• Part II - The 1960s
• Part III - Toward new growth
• Part IV - The L'Oréal spirit
• Skills: the foundation of authority in companies and civil society
• Index
• Contents