David Butet, the head of the CDVA communications group and buyer in 2014 of the carpenter Atelier Panel, manufacturer of exhibition stands and store designer, saves the furniture without any pun intended. Since the end of April, it has successfully marketed a distributor of hydro-alcoholic gel in the form of a column unit, which can be operated by foot.
The industry is good at making concrete. David Butet, head of the event communication group CDVA, sees all the benefits when, one of his many sleepless nights in late April, while his business is deprived of all activity with containment, he imagines a gel dispenser wooden hydro-alcoholic.
This piece of furniture takes the form of a small column, 1.4 meters high, with an innovative compartment at the top to accommodate a bottle of gel of different sizes. It can also be operated by foot, thus avoiding any tactile contact with the spout.
“As everything gradually started to stop for me and my teams at the end of February, with the ban on gatherings of 5,000 already, then 1,000 people and finally the introduction of confinement, I had time to think “, he confesses.
But for this specialist, with different subsidiaries, in the production of events, the development of marketing strategies, the creation of pop-up shops or even poster campaigns in open-air hotels, it was not, however, immediate .
One design day
“After a period of amazement, from mid-March to mid-April, I would run from banks to law firms, going through public accounting firms, placing everyone on partial unemployment and telling me that the first affected, we were going to be the last to leave. “
The leader admits that his presidency of the Medef in Côte-d’Or saved him from depression and withdrawal. “ Sharing with others keeps you going, avoids the feeling of loneliness, causes empathy and puts things into perspective “Admits David Butet.
The innovative idea occurred this sleepless night and noted in a notebook, the following day he entrusted to the head of Strat Design, his design office in space planning.
A day later, three Atelier Panel employees return to develop the prototype. And on April 27, the production starts with already 50 first pre-sold copies, which makes it possible to pay for the raw material.
Today, the company benefits from 750 orders which employ 15 people in production. Contacts have already been established internationally, in Spain and Switzerland. The unit price varies from 300 to 365 € HT, depending on the quantity, excluding a can of hydro-alcoholic gel.
The latter comes from Hygiène et Nature, a company very close to its premises and the logistics are provided by Specific Log, also located a stone’s throw away.
Other models are being developed: one for schools, smaller by 1.2 meters, another dedicated to large containers (5-liter cans) and probably also a distributor designed for the exterior, or even another integrable.
” I believe that this hygiene product will become permanent because the pandemic is far from over, and then it will become part of everyday life. The only concern: the risk of counterfeiting that is emerging.
Atelier Panel resumed in 2014 and moved to Dijon completed in 2017 an investment of € 4 million on its new Dijon site. The last financial year had a turnover of € 3 million with 47 full-time equivalents.
The CDVA group
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Made up of Strategic Event companies, recently renamed Muwse, event producer, and Strat Design, a design office in the creation and development of new concepts for fitting out sales spaces, CDVA also relies on Atelier Panel joinery , and Made in Out, a local signage network, leader in outdoor accommodation with one million tourists affected. At the end of 2019, the whole weighed no less than € 8 million in turnover with a workforce of 70 full-time equivalents.
A graduate of the Dijon-Bourgogne Business School, now known as the Burgundy School of Business (BSB), this 43-year-old man on May 19 quickly found himself head of 1,500 employees. In Paris, in 1999, he joined Promotion Étoile, which practices street marketing (distribution of samples). The company won the distribution of the free newspaper 20 Minutes and was bought in 2002 by Carat, which later became Dentsu Media. David Butet, taken under the wing of a manager, was entrusted in 2005 with the management of the Posterscope subsidiary – which has since disappeared – which employs 1,500 people.
” It was exciting, well paid, but I no longer had any private life and saw neither my family nor my friends “David Butet slips. His wife, appointed to a post in Dijon, their hometown, makes him think. He then wants to resign, meanwhile buys Strategic Event, but his employers retain him to form a successor. ” I knew the Paris-Dijon back and forth journeys until 2010. ”
And then, it is the entrepreneurial adventure, recognized by his peers to have become on May 3, 2018, president of Medef Côte-d’Or to the succession of Pierre-Antoine Kern, boss of Options Télécom and other BSB graduate .
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