Melvita focuses on global expansion

The natural cosmetics firm Melvita is investing an impressive 25 million euros in a new building at its headquarters in Lagorce in the south of France. You can see a crane towering over the site where the foundations and basement are already finished. The head of the firm, Bernard Chevilliat, points out that this building alone is swallowing up 14.5 million euros, and then furnishings, facilities for the personnel and other costs will account for another 10 million over the first three years. The three-storey production facility has been planned as an eco-building, and the opening ceremony will take place in the middle of 2011.

This traditional company employs today 350 people. It was founded at a beekeeping farm in 1983 by Bernard Chevilliat and his brother near the current headquarters on the road from Aubenas to Vallon Pont d’Arc (Ardèche) that is so popular with tourists. Over the following 25 years, the company developed so vigorously and is so sound that they wanted to become a presence on the international market too. A couple of years ago, they teamed up with the big company L’Occitane, and from that point onwards their sights were set on expansion. “We’ve cooperated with L’Occitane for many years and we have a very good relationship,” is how Bernard Chevilliat characterized the collaboration between the two companies during a visit by Organic-Market.Info to Melvita.

Melvita boutiques now number 15 which have been opened in the last one and a half years, for example, in Karlsruhe, Moscow, Istanbul, New York, Hongkong and Ljubljana. The last ones were opened in Paris and Prague very recently. By the end of 2010, with the addition of a third boutique in Hongkong, a second in Prague and others in the USA, Japan, England (London), Korea and Taiwan, there should be 20 to 25. “There’s a great deal of interest in Asia in particular, where people are now discovering and appreciating natural cosmetics,” Amanda Gérentes is pleased to report. The outward appearance of the shops has recently undergone a slight change. Whilst the boutique that was opened in Karlsruhe in March of this year had lime-green trees on the façade, the façade of the latest shops is a uniform green.

She tells us that the collaboration with L’Occitane and its worldwide network has really proved its worth: “In Moscow, for example, our crew managed to install a Melvita boutique within three weeks.” They want to develop their market in France too, where they are expecting growth of 15 – 20 % in 2010. Since April of this year, they have had a sales office with six staff in Paris, and a flagship store (86 m²) has been open in the capital since 1.7.2010 (Rue de Rennes). From October, two body care booths in a city spa will be available in this store. The logistics department, with a dozen staff, has been located in the vicinity of Aubenas (south-west of Lyon).

Turnover is continuing to develop positively in France too: in the financial year ending in April 2010 Melvita recorded a turnover of 30 million euros. The company stays the market leader of the French natural cosmetic sector.

 
The company’s marketing strategy will continue to focus on specialist demand. To ensure maximum efficiency in advising customers, at the Melvita headquarters in Lagorce seven staff are on hand to reply quickly to enquiries from consumers and shops (picture). There also is an international section for demands. The German market is served by the Melvita office in Düsseldorf that was opened in the autumn of 2009.
(photo left side: quality control in the own laboratory is most important)

Melvita is concentrating on the delivery to the specialised sector such as natural food stores and natural cosmetics stores as well as to some drugstores and pharmacies. 

The new eco building measures 8,000 m² and will double the space available to the company. The well cooled basement which is under the earth will be for fresh raw materials and the warehouse; the ground floor will house the production plant and the very important manufacturing in the clean room. The offices will be on the top floor surrounded by roofs with green vegetation. The whole building will be encased in wood fibre insulation to keep in the heat in winter and to keep it out in summer. As well as an attractive sales and show room. There will be an visitors circuit above the manufacturing in the production halls as well as video installations and interactive animations. “We want to create transparency in production, because we already get loads of enquiries from interested customers,” explains Amanda Gérentes, who is the daughter of Bernard Chevilliat, has worked at Melvita for the last few years and is now PR manager. In 2005, she completed her Master’s course in cosmetics and marketing in Versailles. (Picture: Amanda Gérentes (29) with her father (55))

Since the early days of the company, it has also produced natural cosmetics and soaps under the private label of other firms. This allowed to invest money into specialised equipment and machines. The growth of the Melvita sales has opened the possiblity to mainly produce under the own label. Besides they produce for L'Occitane soaps including travel-size articles in tubes and small soaps that are handy for taking with you when flying. (Picture: Semi-mechanised soap packing)

“Whether it’s oils, gels, shampoos, liquids or creams, we’ve got filling equipment for all sorts of packaging and units,” explains Gérentes. Shampoo is mixed in 3,000 l containers (picture on right), and creams are mixed in 1,000 l machines. To save water, most processes use steam. The company operates a three-shift system from 5.00 to 13.00, from 13.00 to 21.00 and from 21.00 to 5.00. The products go first to the stores if tests of the own quality department have been carried out to certify compliance with the company’s quality standards. 15 people work in the laboratories on quality control; five of them are engineers trained in microbiology. (Picture on left below: The abbreviation HPLC means super-modern, molecular analysis equipment)
 

Despite the considerable effort that has gone into expansion abroad and the new building project the section dealing with innovation has in no way been neglected. In November 2009, they launched a seven-item range for young people and young adults with, for example, a product for acne. The company (the number one in the specialist trade in France) is putting 40 new articles on the market this year. In March 2010 a sun protection line with five products was launched, and in April there was a mother-and-child range which is non-allergic and free of fragrances and alcohol. "The constant research on the quality and the characteristics of the plants is our main concern", says the responsible for the R&D department.

The product range, consisting of over 350 articles, is divided into twelve groups: face care (Apicosma, Bio-excellence), body care, body hygiene and tooth paste, men’s care, young people, kids and mom's products, capillary-action products, algae science, toilet waters, soaps, food supplements and bee products. They recently completed labelling all products in three languages. First comes French, then English followed by German. This means that all Melvita products can be marketed easily in the German and English-speaking countries. Amanda Gérentes is clearly very pleased (picture): “We’ve gone a stage further and standardized our design mostly realised by my father and put an attractive series of natural pictures below the product name.”
 

Tip: Melvita