Armand Petitjean

Armand Petitjean (born May 30, 1884 in Saint-Loup-sur-Semouse , Haute-Saône , France ; † September 28, 1969 ) was a French businessman , perfumer and founder of the luxury brand Lancôme , who lived five years before his death in the Ownership of the cosmetics company L'Oréal passed.

Life

Armand Petitjean, an adventurer, started an importing company in South America and settled in Santiago. Having thanks to the then Foreign Minister of France , Philippe Berthelot the First World War had escaped, he turned in Brazil and Argentina of diplomacy , but abandoned after the war to an ambassadorship in Brazil, to pursue again the shops.

François Coty , the most important perfumer of the time, initially entrusted Petitjean with the management of his Brazilian branch and appointed him general director of the French parent company at the end of the 1920s . As part of this activity, he acquired skills and abilities and developed the “nose” that is essential for creating perfumes, that is, the ability to smell and reproduce the fragrance composition from a perfume bottle, or to put together exquisite fragrances yourself.

After the death of François Coty, Petitjean left the company to found his own elite luxury brand for perfume and cosmetics, not without poaching a number of Coty's employees: the d'Ornano brothers for the commercial sector, the glass artist Georges Delhomme for the design the flacons and boxes , the chemist Pierre Vélon and the lawyer Edouard Breckenridge. Madame Petitjean took over the secretariat. Petitjean developed the perfumes himself, just as he designed the accompanying texts. For several months, Petitjean's family home “Les Vallières” in Ville d'Avray and the associated garage were used to develop the project.

The company, which was founded on February 21, 1935 under the name Lancôme, derived from the French Lancosme Castle, brought five perfumes, two Eaux de Cologne , a powder and several lipsticks onto the market just a month later . In extremis , Petitjean managed to arrange participation in the world exhibition in Brussels , where the brand was officially launched and promptly received an award. The establishment of its own factory in Courbevoie and a boutique in the posh Faubourg Saint-Honoré on the street of the same name (house number 29) preceded the spectacular development of the company, which had conquered 31 markets in six months and whose sales abroad soon surged domestic reached.

Without being confused by the events of the Second World War and the occupation of Paris by German troops, Petitjean founded the in -house school called Ecole Lancôme in February 1942 , where he trained his “Charme-Kommando”, beauticians and ambassadors for conquering new markets all over the world. Despite the bombing of the Courbevoie plant, production, which in 1936 was 29,600 bottles, reached 720,000 bottles in 1946, so that in the 1950s the Courbevoie plant proved too small. A new factory was built between 1957 and 1962 in Chevilly-Larue near Orly Airport in the middle of a large rose garden.

In the meantime, the product range had continued to expand with falling sales figures and a planned foray into the American market failed, where Lancôme was represented with a cosmetic studio in the New York department store Saks and ten selected luxury boutiques. The reason for the loss of market share was the non-existent market strategy and the fact that Armand Petitjean categorically refused to replace the luxurious, ornate and expensive lipstick tubes with cheaper disposable tubes. During this critical time in 1951, at the age of 67, he left the company to his son Armand Marcel, who received a gold medal and an honorary diploma for Lancôme at the 1959 World Exhibition in Brussels, but was unable to save the company despite reorganization and modernization and sold it to L'Oréal in 1964.

Armand Petitjean died in 1969.

Awards

• 1956: Great Medal of Honor from the City of Paris

Web link

• The history of the House of Lancôme on the website of prodimarques (French)