Great farewell day, this Friday July 16, for sixty employees of the Bellier company, in Fay-aux-Loges. Around a common meal, they said goodbye to their boss, Samuel Poisson. He had taken over this joinery – where Jean-Pierre Bellier (the founder, in 1976) had hired him as a designer – in 2003. He developed it, increasing the workforce from 20 to 60 people, by including selling stairs on … the Internet and abroad.
It is also by traveling regularly to the United States, where Bellier has already sold five achievements, that the soon-to-be 50-year-old made his decision, just before the first confinement. Holder of an investor visa, he leaves to settle, with his wife Nathalie who will work with him, and two of the five children of this blended family, in Phoenix, Arizona.
He will become a Bellier customer
The goal ? Sell there, with your company Oeba LLC, from 100 to 150 high-end stairs per year, to architects or builders beautiful homes in California, Arizona and Texas. Subcontracted on site, or, for the more complex, composed of several materials (wood, metal, glass) … manufactured in Fay-aux-Loges. “The Americans are fond of our know-how. They see us as builders of cathedrals, castles of the Loire …”, he explains.
“I made very good contacts there. The construction market is doing very, very well there. I could have developed this market from here but it was more credible to be there. 50 years old, I wanted change “, smiles the business manager, who leaves this Sunday July 18.
This self-taught, originally from Pithiviers and holder of an agricultural CAP, who, now, is doing well in English, will be served. His two 15-year-old sons will be entering American schools on August 4. The family will live near Phoenix where the temperature is maintained at 40 degrees in summer ! “It’s very pretty, very neat. I already know about fifteen families there.” Including French.
He will leave behind not only all his employees (in the hands of Remzi Kurban, read below) but also a dense network, created within the Loiret building federation or the associations of entrepreneurs APM and CJD, where Remzi Kurban also succeeds him. He will also leave memories: difficult ones, as during the Bellier fire in 2009, but also, he says, “full of great encounters”.
Remzi Kurban takes over the management of Bellier
The company designs, manufactures and sells some 2,700 stairs per year.
Samuel Poisson, who remains, for the next five years, a minority stake in the capital of Bellier, leaves the management of the company to Remzi Kurban, 37 years old. The latter, holder of two masters in management and management, joined Bellier in 2014 as sales and marketing director before becoming Managing Director in April 2018.
This year, after having set up, among other things, a day off for the birthdays of its employees, (which earned the company “a little too” reports in all major media), the new manager must acquire a building, on the other side of the road, on the Zac des Loges, to expand by 800 square meters and set up the metal workshop there. This should translate into five recruitments next year.
Bellier manufactures some 2,700 stairs per year, which the company markets under the Oéba brand, whether in its showrooms, at its distributors or … on Internet. E-commerce will represent this year
1 million euros on a turnover which should increase to 6.6 million.
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Carole Tribout
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