November 2013
Summary
Réalités industrielles
Life-style industries
Complete issue
This issue was coordinated
by Thomas PARIS
This issue was coordinated
Foreword
By Arnaud Montebourg
Ministre du Redressement productif
Introduction
By Thomas PARIS
PREG-CRG, École Polytechnique
A challenge for France
The French life-style: Relocation or extinction?
By Patrick THOMAS
The art of living (art de vivre), French style, is a clear concept for many people even though it is hard to define objectively. With its material and immaterial aspects, it is being exported successfully and now carries weight in the country’s balance of trade. Experiments with offshore production have often failed however. Can a luxury good be separated from its “soul” without losing it?
The Strategic Committee of the Fashion and Luxury Goods Industries
By Benjamin LEPERCHEY
The luxury goods industry (excluding tourism) employs 170.000 people in France and runs up sales of €43 billion. Given its growing share in the economy, it holds a strategic position and, understandably, receives special attention from public authorities. Following a trade convention, the CSF (Strategic Committee of the Fashion and Luxury Goods Industries) was set up in 2010. It seeks to work out a strategic action plan involving all stakeholders so as to ensure this industry’s future, reinforce it and improve its performance in exports.
Why the Michelin Guide has been successful in Japan
By Gwendal POULLENNEC
Just as Parker’s Guide, the Shanghai classification and the Fitch or Moody ratings have all become worldwide reference marks, the Michelin Guide is the bible of dining. How did this publication — so totally French and local owing to its history and conception — manage to compel recognition elsewhere? As the example of Japan shows, there is, besides the guide’s universal qualities, such as objectivity and independence, an intercultural meeting, the necessary condition for this product to be genuinely adopted.
Tourism in France, an abandoned goldmine
By Julien BARNU
Thanks to its rich, historical and cultural, legacy, its brand names of worldwide renown, its art de vivre and big department stores, France has inevitably become a tourist destination — the most attractive in the world since the 1990s. Despite its assets, the tourist trade here has several weak points, in particular in reception and services. Many reports have clearly identified the actions for making up for this, but the major impediment to carrying them out is cultural. We must, as other countries have done, foster an “awareness” of tourism in both politics and the general population.
The arts de vivre explained by stakeholders
The craft of perfumery, an art de vivre
By Jean-Claude ELLENA
Given that globalization is standardizing tastes, big industries have worked out strategies for orienting the market by taking into account how purchasers consume what they buy. This attaches more importance to demand than to supply. As a consequence, the future of life-style industries, and thus of perfumers, is more than ever linked to distinction, diversity and creation. To exist, they must be inventive. Making a break with the trend toward standardization, Hermès let, in 2004, a perfumer-creator — someone with a “nose” — in charge of developing new scents, thus resetting value on an individual’s talent. What makes a perfume is not its costs but its emotional impact. Creating a perfume is mainly a “work of the spirit”.
The two worlds of wine
By Éric GOETTELMANN
Wine arouses strong feelings — not only emotions and love but also feelings related to the marketplace and money. French wines and spirits run up a positive balance of trade, a plus for the national economy: a surplus of €9,5 billion in 2012. Wine depends on three basic factors: the land (terroir), vintage year (millésime) and the people who make it — all of them factors of uncertainty for investors. Financial pressure as well as globalization are weighing down on the wine business. Along with modern enology, they are leading to a standardization with few risks and considerable leeway. For a sommelier, such as the author, the challenge is to see to it that wine does not merely become a standardized or speculative product, but remains a source of pleasure.
Jazz in the kitchen
By Alain PASSARD
The author is a chef with three stars in the Michelin Guide for his restaurant, L’Arpège, in Paris. An inexplicable creative paradox and a revelation led him to make a break with animal flesh, on which he had built his know-how, and to devote his cooking to vegetables. He thus came to have his own gardens in order to harvest knowledge about vegetables of all sorts. His story helps us better understand the occupation of cook.
Les métiers d’art, les réalités économiques d’un secteur méconnu
By Anne JOURDAIN
The situation of arts and crafts in France is paradoxical. Although public authorities tirelessly proclaim this field’s strong economic potential, this declaration is a matter of assumption rather than observation. The political sphere and even French society in general know little about this business, because very few studies have been made of it. A sociological survey using qualitative and quantitative methods helps make up for this lack of knowledge by bringing to light the economic and social facts of the arts-and-crafts business…
Les dynamics of life-style industries
French-style luxury goods, a promising market or an original, dominant strategy?
By Vincent BASTIEN
The arts de vivre is closely related to the luxury goods industry. When we talk about the former, we mostly have in mind the latter. Whereas the art of living is a highly abstract concept, luxury goods are quite concrete. Many a statistic is available about them. Luxury goods lie at the center of this article, which seeks to move beyond the idea of the market for them and focus on this industry’s strategy.
Economics of the fashion industry
By Dominique JACOMET
The concept of fashion is essential for understanding contemporary economy and society. In France, fashion is seen in contrasting ways — often laden with praise when it evokes a brilliant image and incarnates a facet of the French tradition, but, too, loaded with disapproval when it is perceived as a vanity. To move beyond these commonplaces, attention is drawn to the importance of fashion seen from three angles: the perimeter of the fashion business, the place of fashion in the “industries of creation”, and fashion as a system.
Design endows everyday objects with the touch of an art de vivre
By Anne-Marie BOUTIN
The APCI (Agence pour la Promotion de la Création Industrielle) has a special role observing how design enters into the promotion of a French-style art of living. Traditional life- style industries — like the most competitive businesses in all fields of the economy — update their know-how thanks to designers who use new materials or techniques. Their goal is to access new markets and thus maintain the glow of a French art de vivre at the international level.
Style, the driving force in positioning PSA Peugeot-Citroën
By Jean-Pierre PLOUÉ
Given globalization, style is becoming a major factor in brand recognition. This observation led the author, who heads Style at PSA Peugeot-Citroën, to focus on how this industrial group positions its various makes and to launch a new line, the DS, for banking in on France’s reputation in luxury goods. The “Paris spirit” is a strong point for competing with automakers with a better market position in terms of price or perceived quality. When embodied in products, the French life-style can help improve a firm’s competitive advantage
Life-style industries and employment
By Jean-Luc DÉCHERY
France is recognized for its promotion of life-style industries, but this is no guarantee for success. To succeed, a company must reckon with a long time frame, appraise the excellence of its products or services, and intensify its efforts for internationalization. Camille Fournet, a dealer in fine leather goods, has created fifty jobs at its major plant in Aisne department, an area afflicted by industrial blight. Its guideline has been the assumption that brand recognition will ensure that these jobs become permanent and will even spur a growth in employment. Behind such magnificent leaders, the French economy lacks, in this sector as in others, the host of small and middle-sized firms that could sustain growth.
Miscellany
Three-dimensional printing, a key technology for factories of the future?
By Arthur GUILLOUZOUIC-LE CORFF
Little known till recently, 3D-printing has, in a single year, gained recognition through its increasing presence in the mass media. This visibility might have come from seemingly minor incidents, such as printing a firearm in an American citizen’s home or the $125.000 that NASA has devoted to a program for making pizza. However this new focus of public attention is synched with sturdy, fast growth in the industrial uses of this new technology for making objects as different as components for aircraft, jewelry, dentures or personalized plastic objects. Public authorities in the United States and China have intervened in this new market to help national businesses emerge there. Would it not be worthwhile for French or EU authorities to do the same?