Premium Beauty News - You took over the reins of VG Emballage 3 years ago now. What were the main highlights of the year 2012?
Laurent Chevallier - For us, the year 2012 was marked by three major events: first, the ramp up of our PET offer using our own tooling for both the injection and blow moulding of bottles. This has enabled us to offer all the ranges in our portfolio in a new material, suiting perfectly our customers’ expectations.
The year 2012 was then marked by the completion of our website, with all its features now fully operational, from the interactive product catalogue – enabling to view a bottle/accessory couple – to the section dedicated to customers and where they can trace their orders, download the technical documentation related to their products, this site has helped us showcase the richness of our offering while providing substantial productivity gains to our teams and our customers. Finally, the year 2012 was marked by the signing of an exclusive distribution agreement for France, of the EZ-FILL range from the Stevanato group, the leader in sterile glass tubes for the pharmaceutical industry. Available from stock in small quantities, this range of glass sterile tube bottles is a “ready-to-fill” solution offered to all companies in the pharmaceutical sector to enable them to focus on the core of their activities by outsourcing sterilization issues.
Premium Beauty News - We spoke of French exception... But actually the scope of action of VG Emballage is not limited to France. You have even increased your presence in neighbouring countries!
Laurent Chevallier - Indeed, VG Emballage is active well beyond French borders. In Germany and Italy, where our flow of business is continuous, we have permanent employees. In the other countries, that our export team manages from our headquarters, we are currently strengthening our network of relays, agents or distributors in order to best use our very broad catalogue.
Needless to say that our correspondents abroad were the first to support our new online showcase, available in English, German and Italian languages, which has greatly facilitated their commercial work in terms of selection of items and offer with their own customers. As a consequence, the year 2012 saw the completion overseas of several significant full service markets with new customers.
Premium Beauty News - One of the strengths of VG Emballage has always been innovation. A few examples?
Laurent Chevallier - In fact, VG Emballage has always strived in the past to design or propose items which are innovative through their functionality or design. This is still the case today with developments coming from our in-house Technical Department and the research works conducted by our Purchasing Department.
As an example, I can name two extremely successful innovations of ours: our BeSafe dual tamper-evident service cap, a perfect accessory to secure the packaging, and also our dual-security P2000 Pump that meets two main issues – safety and recycling – and which has already been adopted by major players in the health & beauty sector.
Convinced that innovation is a source of added value, we also distribute some innovative products from selected partners: thus in 2010, we integrated in our Airless Ecosolution range, the eco-designed Airless solution from our partner Promens, and this year our catalogue was complemented with the EZ-FILL range, the glass sterile tube bottles from the Stevanato Group.
Premium Beauty News - Perfumery, cosmetics, pharmacy, chemistry, food industry... What is actually the distribution between these different sectors of your activity. Is one more important than others? In the future do you intend to develop one more than others? If so, why? And if not, why?
Laurent Chevallier - Perfumery/Cosmetics, and Pharmacy each represent 35-40% of our business, with the remainder consisting mainly of other Industries. These proportions remain relatively stable over time. For us, the coexistence of these markets is crucial in our business model, for two reasons: the first concerns the dispersion of the market risk. To cope with economic cycles, it is saver to rest on several pillars which support one another. The second is related to the gradually fading lines between our customer industries: products offered by companies tend to diversify and articles are interchangeable from one catalogue to another. Hence, being historically present in the different sectors, we are well positioned to support these changes.
Premium Beauty News - What is the proportion between the products you own and those you distribute? Will it change in the future?
Laurent Chevallier - This proportion is completely different depending on materials and types of items: for glass bottles, we operate on a distribution mode since the items belong to our parent company SGD. Yet, we own some lines like for example the beautiful “Fleur d’Oranger” range that SGD designed for us.
For plastic bottles, the situation is at the opposite: VG Emballage owns almost all the lines it distributes. The company has designed its bottles, chosen the key features and made the investment in tooling for their production. This is entrusted to industrial partners scattered in France and abroad. For accessories, we mostly undertake their distribution, except for our own proprietary models or for the ones that we have co-developed with our industry partners. In some cases, this distribution is performed on exclusive bases. This way of operating is not likely to radically change in the future.
But I would like to stress on one point which I believe is the strength of our offering, namely the interoperability of our products: whether they are distributed or “proprietary”, products have been developed or selected to work with one another, so that our customers find for each of their needs a comprehensive and ready-to-use “bottle-decor-accessory” offer.
Premium Beauty News - What does the year 2013 look like for your company? What will be the main highlights?
Laurent Chevallier - From a technical point of view, the year 2013 will be dedicated to updating our website with our regulatory library which will allow for our customers to download in just one click all the certificates in connection with the items they buy from us. At a time when guidelines and regulatory texts on primary packaging are becoming more stringent, this service seemed an absolute necessity.
For business in general, the year 2013 will be difficult for items intended for the finished product to be sold in the country. Export products will probably perform better. However such forecast only applies to already well established products, what we call the portfolio fund. To this can be added the additional business brought by launches and new products in the catalogue. In terms of launches, the number of offers currently in the pipeline is at a level that we consider acceptable. As regards new items, our new product offer will be very rich in 2013, with some very interesting novelties, and this, as of the first quarter. It is definitely for us the highlight of the year 2013! But more is to come up soon...
