Anyone who surfs to his Instagram page will see photos of Mike Touzard in Rio de Janeiro, in Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Costa Rica, San Francisco, Kuala Lumpur… You see him skiing, in a business jet or behind the wheel of a Ferrari. You will see him at the Cop28 climate summit with Emmanuel Macron and Bill Gates. Always smiling, always confident.
And don’t blame him. The story of Touzard, a young man born in Brussels in 1995 who, in addition to Belgian, also has French and Israeli nationality, is an incredible success story. A story that starts at the age of fifteen, when he was still in high school. “I had seen online that laser pointers were being sold in China for 7 euros each. I ordered ten and sold them all within two days, for 15 euros each,” he testifies in La Dernière Heure.
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It was the start of a meteoric career. “After a short time I became the bestseller for lasers on eBay Benelux and soon I was also selling them in France and the rest of Europe. I have sold thousands.” In the meantime, Touzard also built up relationships in China, relationships that would come in very handy later.
After lasers, he expanded his range to numerous ‘made in China’ gadgets for mobile phones: cases, headphones, chargers… And at the age of seventeen – even though he didn’t have a driver’s license yet – he bought an old Alfa Romeo for 2,000 euros … to resell the car two days later for 3,500 euros. “I discovered that you can make money with anything. Being an entrepreneur means constantly adapting to new situations in a constantly evolving world.”
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Guangzhou Airport
Touzard would go on to found (and resell) numerous other companies, but in January 2020 – he had just turned 24 – everything changed. Then he received a message from his girlfriend Chen, saying that everyone at Guangzhou airport was being checked for Covid-19. Touzard, who was working on a project involving electric mopeds at the time, immediately switched gears. Within six weeks he had found the right partners in China for a new company: Medakit. “While European leaders were still wondering whether the virus would reach here, the Chinese had already developed rapid tests.”
Not much later, Touzard was the first to market rapid tests in the European Union that could be performed at home. Not in Belgium, according to him, Maggie De Block put a stop to that. But in France, in the rest of Europe, in Africa, South America, Asia, Israel… Ultimately he would sell more than 10 million before he also sold Medakit.
His success has far from gone unnoticed: he was included in the Forbes Under 30 Technology Council, a very prestigious recognition in the business world.
And what now? Now Touzard dreams of conquering China and Congo, two markets where he says “anything is possible”. “Congo in particular is extremely rich in opportunities,” he says. “I want to keep dreaming and have control over my life. Working for someone else is working for someone else’s dreams and that’s not for me.”
2024-03-13 06:00:28
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