It is esti­mat­ed that between 1 and 11% of the pop­u­la­tion in France fol­low a low-gluten diet (i.e., with­out wheat, rye, oat or bar­ley pro­teins) and it can be observed that the gluten-free food­stuff mar­ket is very rapid­ly expand­ing. Bruno Pierre, who grad­u­at­ed from UTC in 1987 with the major Bio-Engi­neer­ing (UTC-GB) is a pio­neer in the field and he reveals his recipes for Inter­ac­tions readers. 

Bruno Pierre reg­is­tered his com­pa­ny group ABCD Nutri­tion in 2009, spe­cial­ized in ‘bio’ and gluten-free prod­ucts with five trade­marks (Les Recettes de Céliane, Moulin d’Amhara and Moulins, Bio­then­tic and Viadélice). Today, ABCD Nutri­tion is N°2 in the gluten-free mar­ket. And yet Bruno Pierre had not imag­ined he would become a cor­po­rate CEO when he start­ed his career. “I nev­er thought I would be an entre­pre­neur when I grad­u­at­ed from UTC. I was cre­ative, loved the idea of inno­vat­ing, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly in the vision of set­ting up a com­pa­ny. Indeed, when I set up my first com­pa­ny, this result­ed more from an oppor­tu­ni­ty and to the urge to gain my free­dom”.

And, above all, he had a clear­ly pos­i­tive flair when it came to detect­ing a poten­tial­ly rich mar­ket slot: “I was work­ing at that time, says Bruno Pierre, “with an indus­tri­al bread-mak­ing com­pa­ny, in their R&D divi­sion, and I met a per­son suf­fer­ing from coeli­ac dis­ease and who had his per­son­al indus­tri­al pre­serve bread sup­ply sent over from Great Britain – it was hor­ri­ble, and that led me to think­ing I could prob­a­bly do some­thing here in France. Con­se­quent­ly I set up my first com­pa­ny, Valpi­forme, in 1990.”

That ven­ture imme­di­ate­ly proved a suc­cess, but in 2008 his com­pa­ny was bought out by Lac­tal­is. “I start­ed with very few assets and I was a minor­i­ty share­hold­er”, he explains. “The buy-out was not some­thing I want­ed, so after a year I chose to leave the com­pa­ny. Nonethe­less, the gluten-free sec­tor was still a pas­sion for Bruno Pierre and he decid­ed to set up a sec­ond start-up, even though this was not self-evi­dent. “It was quite a tri­al to start over again from scratch in 2009 – I had to rein­vest in everything”

Bruno Pierre drew lots of con­clu­sions from this expe­ri­ence and he loves to share the lat­ter with young entre­pre­neurs. “I def­i­nite­ly encour­age any­one who wants to launch a start-up –y the expe­ri­ence you gain here is ter­rif­ic. But, when I think back over what hap­pened to me, I think it is essen­tial to be ‘accom­pa­nied’ in the adven­ture, and maybe that was a mis­take I made with my first com­pa­ny. You have to build up a net­work even with the bankers and these rela­tion­ships must be long-term con­struc­tions. More­over, you often hear that the CEO is a lone­ly per­son. As I see it, this is only true if the per­son wants to be alone and a con­trario, some­one who wants to share his pow­ers is nev­er alone. I per­son­al­ly brought my man­agers ion to the cap­i­tal share and ABCD Nutri­tion has a Board of Direc­tors. In that way, we can share the good and the bad moments of cor­po­rate life”.

Bruno Pierre’s pas­sion, 26 years ‘down the road’ is still intact, as is his desire to inno­vate. “Now, we have prod­ucts that are prac­ti­cal­ly iden­ti­cal to food­stuffs con­tain­ing gluten. Our next objec­tive will notably be the devel­op­ment of deep-free lines and to con­tin­ue of course improv­ing the qual­i­ty of all our products!”

 

Bon appétit !