Pierre Miasnik, Fiabila’s CEO

Premium Beauty News - Not everyone can claim being a nail polish manufacturer?

Pierre Miasnik - When a market is growing strongly it always looks attractive from the outside and seems easy enough to tackle. But regardless of the country in which we carry out our activity, safety and regulatory aspects limit the possibilities of a high level of production. To produce a few dozen tonnes in a few hundred square meters is easily manageable but to produce several thousand tonnes in thousands of square meters requires getting authorizations, which are always difficult to obtain and result in particularly high investment costs. To ensure the full traceability, as required by regulations, of several hundred tons of flammable liquid every week, enables to understand how such amounts are reached.

We were often asked to extend our business to other products, but we preferred using our investment capacity to strengthen our position on our market. Productivity, production capacity and product safety involve significant investments for a product, where profitability comes from volumes and to achieve these volumes you need to be particularly competitive. The important position that we hold in many markets with our French company and our subsidiaries have allowed us to validate sustainable sources of raw materials and to strengthen our purchasing at a global level.

Today, the consolidated turnover and volumes achieved by Fiabila put us well ahead of the industry, not to mention our quality level recognized worldwide.

Premium Beauty News - Practically and industrially speaking, where do you stand today?

Pierre Miasnik - I was already given several opportunities to speak in your columns. And your readers already know part of the story.

Examples include investments made on our site in Le Perray en Yvelines concerning high-speed filling lines (zero defects!) suitable for mass production. We can also mention the gradual replacement of our slower lines in our other site in Plaisir. We can also mention the opening of our second production site in the United States and the commissioning of our first filling line in China with our partner Shya Hsin, preceding the commissioning of a tinting line scheduled in September.

Finally, I can tell you that we will be operating in Russia by the end of this year and that our future establishment in Brazil is rapidly progressing.

Ah! I almost forgot... our new factory in Japan will also be operational by the end of 2014.

Premium Beauty News - A progression that takes place in a very specific context.

Pierre Miasnik - Quality and safety are and always have been decisive aspects for Fiabila. Our trade has evolved significantly in recent years. We have to constantly adapt ourselves every day.

In a few months we had to significantly strengthen our regulatory support team. To meet the various legislatures around the world, we need very precise information. Do you know that we have to deal with more than 2,000 different raw materials, with have of them almost daily!

The greater the concentration of our customers, the greater their requirements. Environmental, safety and quality aspects have become so strategic and vital that we have forced ourselves to build very performing teams in all these areas.

To give you a picture, do you know that our industrial investments for environmental matters in our French units represented an amount exceeding 12 million euros over the past few months. But it is not just industrial investments. We have also invested heavily in men. A new Director of Operations has joined us. A new Marketing Director is being recruited. We also strengthened our team in the colour and product development department. It is very important today to anticipate marketing developments and thus, the industrial and logistical consequences they entail. It is all about managing the future in a more conceptual way.