Les Trois Chênes, a new stage After a turbulent 2019 during which their founder had to take a step backwards, Les Trois Chênes Laboratory entered a recovery phase by relying on their key strengths: relevant and innovative formulations and a proactive collaboration with their distributors... An approach that should allow the laboratory to celebrate with confidence its 30th anniversary in 2023. Here’s the recount of our meeting with Jean-Noël Négroni, CEO of Les Trois Chênes Laboratory. Actif’s Mag: What does Les Trois Chênes stand for today? How would you define the laboratory? Jean-Noël Negroni: Our food supplements and cosmetics are distributed in pharmacies, health & beauty stores and health food stores via two umbrella brands: Les Trois Chênes on the one hand, and 3C Pharma on the other one. This latter includes premium supplements formulated with objectified ingredients and is exclusively distributed in pharmacies. Our company is also the exclusive distributor of the Eric Favre brand that tar- gets active persons and athletes of all levels. With one aspect that has remained unchanged since our creation: thrliabi-e e lityof our formulas. We are one of the fw players on he mar-e t ketthat master their whole valuechain. From rplantextaction, anarea where we have acquired distriution expertise, all theb waythrough the manufacturing stage that wmostly carry oute ourselves, we are fully committedtoensuring the traceability andquality of our formulations. Hence, we have decied t ma-do «We have nufacture our liquid formulas at our own producionfacility. At continued project that means we are going to mke investments amoun-a to be “firmly tingto €8 million and is due to complete in erly 2022... The carea forour productions stems from our origin, from ur vey roots.o r anchored into Thevalues we have embedded since the creatin of the com-o the ground”, pany (Editor’s note: in 1993) have remined he same Whata t . understand does it mean? We have continuedtobe “firmly anchred itoo n nature to theground”, understand nature toextract the bet fromt whiles i extract the best preserving it, create value in theruralenviromet (Editr’sonn from it while note: ever since its creation, the company as operated in theh valley landscape of the Monts duLyonnais region), protect the preserving it, value of labour and be effective ina “familiar” setting. In fact, I create value think we are atypical in our approhac to the market, as w of-e in the rural ferquality products sold at the righ pric. And ift e we think it environment.» through, all these are precisely what consumers value. By way of consequence, if last year our turnover increase by only 8%,d since the beginning of the yearwe have sen+20% growth.e Our laboratory generates a turnoverf over €0 million, witho 4 onethird achieved on exports. Weraepreset n all the conti-no nents—except for Latin America—htrough ou distibutors.r r Actif’s Mag: What place does innovation hold in your approach to the market? Jean-Noël Negroni: Our stated mission is to continue to set the standard in terms of formulation reliability, but also in terms of quality, relevance and packaging. Innovation is an sdnarB — seuqraM- 44 -