Issue of ease of use with the customer and

"You prefer minettes or pans. This is the question, disconcerting, the young Philippe Jacquelinet agreed ask upon arrival at La Redoute. The buyer budding wore a mantle of beautiful invoice, it therefore gave him "minettes" include: women's ready-to-wear.

Twenty-five years later, it is always in textile that this adoption AIX operates at the head of Captain turtle, the children's clothing company he created in 1993. But taking the Presidency of the Federation of the direct sale, which he was already a Director since 2004, it will not honor closer to household items. RADIUS represents, with the habitat equipment and decoration, almost half of annual sales in the sector (EUR 1.6 billion) in France.

In any event, it is with great enthusiasm that he will represent the interests of a profession that he wants to put "at the level it deserves." Because if direct selling is now more relegated to the rank of a hawking of another age the scope of the "seller at home" was introduced last year in the Code of trade with the LME it is still much to do to convince authorities and consumer associations, paperless payment, including. The subject is not entirely by chance on the lips of the new President: with its three brands of children's fashion and women, his Captain turtle company made last year a turnover of EUR 45 million (an increase of 18 over a year). All cash and cheques, "collected" by 2,000 démonstratrices.

A love story

The trade was "not at all" in the family culture: a father doctor, Gaullist Mayor of a commune in Dijonnais, poet in his time; a mother mathematics; a painter brother who taught him to love Mondrian; a pianist sister... It is yet without much hesitation that, becoming a contractor, this "marketeux" fascinated by the process of creative jumping turned to selling home, if ordinary image area. Issue of "ease of use with the customer" and... sale price.

But the "founding myth" Captain turtle is otherwise more fiction than a business plan. It is based on a love story that is still: while Philippe Jacquelinet travels the globe for textile purchases of GB Sport, at the beginning of the 1990s, he met Lilian, Dutch fashion designer. Follows a marriage and, in the Recycle Bin of the blond husband gifts very "sub of co" (Mr. graduated from Dijon): a Black-headed turtle as a logo and an offered accounting year, history to help get their business. Two months before the marriage, there was also (and mainly) the severance of 50,000 francs cheque signed by Jean Bousquet, after three weeks of testing stormy at Cacharel. Brief experience was enough to inoculate him the fierce desire to "do not depend on the good will of others."

Since small business became a limited company and open its capital to several financial partners, Philippe and Lilian Jacquelinet retaining the majority. She comes to buy a network for the sale of lingerie and prepares to launch a fourth brand dedicated to the "senior active." There is no point to run...