“When UK timber traders think French timber, some still just think oak,” said Elisabeth Piveteau at her office in London’s Battersea Studios.
As Ms Piveteau is UK and Irish sales director for leading French softwood player PiveteauBois, you might suspect a touch of frustration there. But her observation is tinged more with bemusement, given that France is, in fact, Europe’s joint fourth biggest softwood producer. There’s also clear determination and confidence that UK timber trade assumptions about France can be changed.
It’s a confidence borne partly out of PiveteauBois’s scale and depth and breadth of product range. The company has two major mills and manufacturing plants in France, plus one of each in Poland and its doorstop of a product catalogue stretches from pine carcassing and Douglas fir cladding and decking, through glulam, garden furniture and fencing, to wood plastic composite decking, pellets and treated pine swimming pool kits.
But Ms Piveteau, 45, who has been in her post since 2014, is also clearly upbeat about PiveteauBois’ and French softwood’s prospects in the UK, as she’s already been there and done that. Bringing new and innovative products to market is what she’d been doing for the previous 20 years in a quite different, but at least as demanding sector; the high tech world of electronic patent search systems.
How her life and career has gone from timber, to selling complex online technology to the likes of Bayer and Roche, and back again, she attributes to fortune and circumstance. But there’s obviously drive and energy there too, underlined by the fact that, besides developing Piveteau’s UK business, she, with her British partner, are now into serious life/work juggling following the arrival of their first child, Rose.
“That puts a new light on everything!” she laughed, seemingly unfazed by the short nights and long days.
Back to the beginning, and to say that softwood is in the Piveteau family blood is an understatement. The company started in 1948 when Ms Piveteau’s carpenter grandfather, Pierre, bought a second-hand circular saw and set up a mill in the southwest village of St Florence. Subsequently her father, Pierre, now chairman, and uncle Jean, president, joined the company, followed by her younger brother Philippe and sister Cathy.
She recalls wandering round the sawmill from an early age as ‘the most natural thing’. “I grew up around my grandparents’ house, now an office,” she said. “It was part of our childhood.”
She recalls her grandfather as ‘formidable’ and incredibly hard working, but a man of few words who taught by example, taking her father and uncle to the forest as boys to select timber.
“He carved the business from nothing, and, as there isn’t forest nearby, had to source timber from some distance and use 100% to be profitable,” said Ms Piveteau, adding that this strategy continues today, but as much for environmental reasons, to make the most of the resource, as logistics and the bottom line. Her grandmother was also instrumental in PiveteauBois’s development. “She was the bedrock; running the home and cooking millworkers’ meals. It was a real family business.”
Despite this heritage, however, there was no pressure to join the company. “I don’t remember thinking about it when young,” said Ms Piveteau. “I went to boarding school and did the science baccalauréat. I initially wanted to be a doctor, but dropped that because of the seven years training, which then seemed a lifetime!” Instead, she decided on a future that combined two passions; travel and languages. “Dad was keen for us to learn languages so we spent working holidays in Germany and the UK – in Weston Super Mare,” she said. “I loved it, so after school spent a year as an au pair in Eastbourne. It was perfect and really got my English ‘into the muscle’ – and I’ve kept in touch with the family ever since.”
This experience confirmed her decision to study interpretation, with a stress on business, at the Université Catholique d’Angers. But the year in Eastbourne turned out to be more formative still.
“In my final year I needed a work placement and asked my au pair family for advice. I hadn’t realised, but the father was managing director of a major scientific, technical and medical publisher, Chapman & Hall (C&H),and he got me three months at a subsidiary in Brighton,”she said.“After university, they offered me a summer job, then a permanent one in London, so I just told my parents ‘I’m moving to the UK.
Subsequently I’ve never worked in France!” In her first job, she found herself at the then cutting edge of science publishing; selling chemical data dictionaries on CD Rom. Her next, working for US-based Micropatent, was more innovative still, working with the first internet-based patent search tools. “We sold to fortune 500 businesses in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and automotive,” she said. “They have to constantly search patents to check latest developments, what the competition is up to and to see if anyone is breaching theirs, and vice versa. Online tools, capable of millions of full text searches virtually instantaneously, revolutionised the field. And underlining how new it all was, Peugeot told me they were seriously impressed, but their staff didn’t have internet access!”
As fast moving as the technology was, the buying and selling of businesses involved and movement of personnel between them was faster, and when Micropatent was acquired, Ms Piveteau was headhunted by research giant LexisNexis, which was starting its own patent information division. A couple of years later she moved again.
“In that business, your customers are your value, and LexisNexis’ patent search tool wasn’t quite market ready, so I wouldn’t sell it,” she said. “If it missed one patent, it could cost users millions. I pretty much talked myself out of work!”
In swift succession came a job offer from another US business, trumped by one from ‘some crazy guys in Austria’ developing a whole new patent software system at start-up Matrixware.
“So I found myself immediately renting the flat I’d just bought in London and moving to Vienna for four years!”
When Matrixware’s angel investor in turn pulled out in 2010, Ms Piveteau, temporarily moved back to France and started ‘thinking about the longer term’. Circumstance intervened once more, however, when she met her next boss at a conference, leading to her joining Surechem and what sounds her most high-tech product yet.
“They were developing text mining systems for pharmaceuticals and chemicals businesses, like Dow and Bayer, to automatically extract chemical data from patents,” she said. “It was another exciting development.”
Three years on, however, Macmillan divested Surechem and Ms Piveteau decided to revisit the taking stock process.
“I saw the career paths Philippe and Cathy were on and started to think about PiveteauBois. But the UK was home. I’m a Londoner. I love the British sense of humour and maybe freer approach in business and less judgemental one in life, at least superficially!,” she said. “However, my father told me the company were going to target the UK. They’d tried previously, but it wasn’t the right time. Now was different, with new products and a growing UK market. There was also the incentive of France’s slower economic recovery and French forests’ and PiveteauBois’ increasing output. He said they’d do it anyway, but preferred to do it with me!”
Ms Piveteau also saw parallels between her PiveteauBois role and previous career. “It is like a start-up, despite have an established business behind it,” she said. “We’re also developing a new market, trying to educate customers about new and different products, plus PiveteauBois has always been innovative.
“It was a French pioneer in pressure treated pine, and our Durapin brand is now the benchmark for quality, Class 4 timber. We’re also at the forefront in Douglas fir. It’s a naturally durable and versatile timber specie, France is now Europe’s biggest producer and we’ve developed a range of new products using it.”
PiveteauBois’s UK and Irish focus is products that differentiate it. “We’re concentrating on value-added, not fighting over pennies for commodities, ” said Ms Piveteau. “Our cladding and fencing are getting a lot of interest, due to their distinctive designs, as are our timber and composite timber decking and glulam and we’re particularly intent on developing Douglas fir products.”
Examples of Piveteau’s latest innovations, she added, were decking boards with a rounded surface, aiding water run-off, diverse new cladding profiles, and a grey decking and cladding finish, giving a ready-silvered look that’s proving a designer favourite.
Besides merchants, the company is marketing direct to design and specifier sectors. It had an ‘excellent’ London Landscape exhibition last year, and this year is at the Vision architecture and construction show.
And overall, said Ms Piveteau, the UK and Irish response has been positive. “People have been welcoming and receptive and we’re very pleased with progress so far.”
If it continues, she added, PiveteauBois may consider UK stockholding.
“But we can also serve the market from St Florence, which is closer to South East England than Scotland is!.”
So, in short, she has no regrets about returning to her Piveteau timber roots. “Some potential new customers, still assume I’m selling oak!” she laughed. “But that won’t last long!”
