Duralex CEO François Marciano, 59, corpulent and good-natured, has a strange habit. In the middle of an argument, he throws his glass on the floor. Before laughing, he says: “It’s to show you that it’s unbreakable.” » The glass, obviously a Duralex, remains intact. But it was the entire company that was almost shattered. It took a sacred union between workers and management, local authorities from opposing political parties, the State and the banks to save at the last minute this French industrial plant that employs 228 employees and was declared insolvent at the end of April.
Together they imagined its transformation into a workers’ cooperative production society (SCOP); the employees have been, since 1Ahem August, the majority shareholders of his company. On 2 September, on his behalf, François Marciano, former and new director, presented his project for the brand, appearing in particular alongside Guillaume Gibault, head of Le Slip français, during a promotional operation “made in France”.
Inventor of tempered glass, obtained by brutal applications of cold and heat on the paste, Saint-Gobain registered the name Duralex in 1945, inspired by the Latin motto Hard law, be law (“the law is harsh, but it is the law”), to praise the solidity of its plates. The glasses, cups and plates are produced in a glassworks located in La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, on the outskirts of Orleans (Loiret). The success was dazzling: the Gigogne glass (1946) and then the Picardy (1954).
They invite each other to the tables and invade the dining rooms. Between breaded fish and mashed potatoes, generations of schoolchildren begin “How old are you?” “ looking at the bottom of your glass, getting younger or older depending on the number written on it. Actually, the number of the mold from which each glass comes.
The brand became iconic. The glasses were exported all over the world. Even today, foreign sales account for more than 80% of turnover. But from the 1990s onwards, Chinese competition and a succession of buyers with risky and even fraudulent management – Sinan Solmaz, a short-lived owner (2005-2008), was convicted of embezzlement of company assets and bankruptcy for embezzlement or concealment for having made off with the cash register – regularly threatened the factory. The latest (since 2021), La Maison française du verre, also the owner of Pyrex, justified having to throw in the towel by arguing that energy prices were soaring.
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