At the time, Bernard Tapie was 36 years old. He has already had other lives, racing driver, singer. This former son of a worker specializing in business recovery, buys, restructures, resells. On his CV, the purchase of broaching boxes and two or three printing houses. And the takeover of eleven companies.
So, at Manufrance, we have a little hope. The company has been in legal settlement for a year with dizzying debts to pay off. She saw a number of CEOs scroll by. A new company (SNM) was created and took on lease-management of the old one, with some 19,000 employees in its workforce. Suffice to say that the buyers do not rush to the gate.
First steps in Saint-Étienne on July 4
The future minister of François Mitterrand already has a big mouth. He told the local press “Since some cases that have made me known, I am usually and generally preceded by a good reputation. “Since certain cases which made him known, it is another reputation that“ Nanard ”drags.
But we are in 1980, July 4th. That day, he presented himself with, in his briefcase, the idea of “making a subsidiary” of Manufrance. “From the outside, it seems to me impossible that a company has the capacity and the quality necessary to take over the whole company with so many different activities even if all are carriers of markets. “Later, he will prefer to speak of” decentralization. ” “
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Second visit on July 23
He is again in Saint-Étienne to present his proposals to the intersyndicale de Manufrance. His plan unfolds three points. One, the maintenance of the armory, the sewing machines and the French periodical Le Chasseur operated by the parent company (SNM). Two, the sale of stores (350 people).
Three, the sale to “companies which have shown their skills in the matter” of mail order sales and the cycle. He plans to put his hand a little in his pockets (10 million francs) but also in those of Macif, one of the owners with Equitas, Fabis, the Loire expansion committee.
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On July 30, Tapie gives up his recovery plan
In the absence of dialogue with the shareholders of the SNM, which considers Tapie’s proposals too vague, the businessman recoils all the more as Macif declares that it no longer wants to put a dime more into the affair.
Last act in October
Tapie claims to have a plan in case the SNM is declared bankrupt. It will be on October 23. A restructuring plan will be presented by the Commercial Court with 800 redundancies, the termination of part of the assets to specialized industrial groups.
A few days later, Tapie was appointed chairman of the former Manufrance company by the board of directors. Even though this old company is an empty shell, it still has movable and real estate assets worth 100 million francs. At the end of the month, he decides to put mail-order sales and the French Hunter under lease management.
A store and a reissued catalog
We know what happened next, with the setting up, at the end of December, of a workers’ cooperative of production and distribution (SCOPD) which was put into compulsory liquidation in 1986.
In 1988, Manufrance was reborn thanks to the Loire businessman Jaques Tativian, who is now deceased. In our columns, in 2013, the latter remembered: “There was such a noise around this sale that I was interested in it. It was there that I became aware of the weight of the Manufrance brand image. I contacted the unions, politicians of the time and bought the auction of the portfolio of trademarks and patents. This is how the hammer fell on my head. “
Since then, a Manufrance boutique has opened on rue de Lodi and a printed catalog has been reissued. Today, the manufacturer, in-store distributor and mail order company of products for walking, fishing, hunting, textiles, cutlery, opened its website. It claims a turnover of around 1.5 million euros and employs around twenty people.
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