How to create a business in France - Luxury, Leather purses

The story of BISSAC

Chapter 1: The circumstances

For quite some time now, I have been searching for a business to take over. Considering my background in architecture, I have always been attracted to furniture and wood. Naturally, I thought of taking over a cabinetmaking. After doing some research, I met a number of wood workers and noticed that most of them were missing some fingers.

I have to admit that this gave me chills. I decided to continue my research but with a more open mind and with other materials that I like to work with. This is how I ended up finding, in the Midi-Pyrenees, a fine leather goods business which was in bankruptcy filling I met the manager and visited the workshop. For at least fifteen years, this company had been making small luxury leather goods for big names, such as; Hermes, Texier… I do not think that Vuitton was one of the clients but she had been producing for Hermes for sure because we still have zippers with their logo. Until just one month before liquidation, 98% of her business was for Texier. The later had decided, like many others, to get the manufacturing done abroad which left Creation Carina without work from one day to the next. The manager quickly looked for new clients but did not have sufficient time. In addition, she had to pay ten salaries every month and finally resigned herself to liquidated. Of course, considering the clients that the shop had had, it was very well equipped and had high end machines. Although I could imagine myself designing handbags, I had no experience working with leather. The workshop is located in Graulhet, in the center of a triangle formed by Toulouse, Albi, and Castres. This city is well-known as the city of leather since until the 50’s and 60’s more than 40% of Europe’s tannery and worked leather was produced here. Therefore, it seemed to me that it would be simple to find people qualified in fine leather works. This we will see.

Since Creation Carina was in bankruptcy, I tried to contact the legal administrator who was in charge of the file to eventually make an offer to take over the company. This was around June or July 2005. It was not until the end of September 2005 that I received an answer telling me that the company was liquidating. I then contacted the usher in charge to find out what was happening, he seemed to say that the person that would buy all this that represented the assets of the business Creation : Carina : the machines, the furnishings, leathers, the stocks, and that would get going again an activity in the places would have a net advantage for the price of the liquidation. I then asked him for the price to buy back the business. It seemed interesting so I was ready to take over Creation Carina. All of this offered a basement but there was a major element missing; what were we going to do, what would be the judicious idea that would allow us to make fine leather goods different from others and which would have a place on today’s high demand market.