“I wanted to give a French voice to the world of IT,” explains the CEO of Metavisio

In a sector dominated by American and Asian giants, Thomson had stopped manufacturing computers since the 1980s. Taken over in 2013 by Stephan Français, he explains how he relaunched the computer industry in France.

In a market of more than 200 billion dollars per year, that of computers, Stéphan Français is grabbing market share from the Asian and American giants, by resurrecting a French brand, Thompson, since 2013. However, Thomson, which had stopped manufacturing computers since the 1980s, was no longer worth “only one franc”, in the words of the Prime Minister in 1996, Alain Juppé.

franceinfo: Stéphan Français, you are the general manager of Metavisio, parent company of the Thomson Computing brand. You relaunched the computers of this French brand in 2013, ten years ago now. Why did you relaunch this brand? What happened to you?

Stéphan French: I absolutely did not want to leave the IT field without a European presence and today we are present in 52 countries. Indeed, the world of computing is a Taiwanese, Chinese or American world. And right now, the geopolitics of our world, unfortunately, clearly shows that there is a duality between the Chinese and the Americans. I wanted to give a French voice, already ten years ago. A voice in fact which allows us to think that today, in terms of technology, the French can take a place in the world, in Europe, in France, but also in India for example. And we have just opened the Indian market, a huge market.

The American and Asian actors are behemoths. How do you differentiate yourself? What is your added value?

I love the word “juggernaut” for my competitors, that’s actually it. These people have more than 10 billion dollars in turnover, at least. And indeed, their strategy, which is absolutely not Thomson’s strategy, is to take enormous market shares in each country, to spend enormously on marketing campaigns that must be amortized for years. Our strategy is rather to have the best value for money, the best technology, make it available to the general public and always be one step ahead. This is what we are trying to do in France, in Europe and around the world.

You are listed on the Paris Stock Exchange. Does it take a lot of money and investment to compete with these brands?

In France, you know the expression “when you don’t have money, you have ideas”.

“Obviously, you need money. But we tend to work with small margins, a net 10%, where our competitors are forced to fetch much more.”

Stéphan French

franceinfo

It is certain that this gives you products which are ultimately quite expensive and which are not necessarily more technological than ours.

So you are explaining to us that it is not the technology that is expensive, but the marketing? Are these all these advertising campaigns that you end up not doing?

Quite. We have a communication strategy with our customers. We do this with “retailers”, that is to say mass market distributors, like Leclerc for example, which has a strategy with a small margin, which allows consumers to have the best product at the best price. We also do this with C-Discount, Boulanger or Électro Dépôt which offer prices on a French brand which are obviously very interesting.

So it’s not the consumers but the distributors that you had to convince.

Exactly. It took us ten years to penetrate the French market, and if this year we are present in 52 countries, it is not by chance. We were able to show that in France, we could gain extremely interesting market shares. We first started with the first prizes. Then, we moved on to the intermediary and we just released “gaming” products. There, it’s high-level with I9 processors. And if you compare our prices with our competitors, there is very little chance that you will not find the best prices with the best technology at Thompson.

Your first client in 2013 was Leclerc. You first specialized in entry-level products, made in China. Today, are your products still made in China?

From the start, product design has been done in France. Afterwards, to get the best quality-price ratio… But we don’t only assemble our computers in China. We have an assembly line in France, in Pontault-Combault (Seine-et-Marne), with the support of the mayor, who is extraordinary. And also in India, since we have been entering the Indian market for several weeks, with historical referencing. We are the first European IT company referenced for Indian public markets. And we are not a little proud of it.

Today, you have 8% market share in France. What are the future growth levers and what market share do you hope to gain from your competitors?

We want to become global. Now that we are present in all brands in France, there are markets that are interesting to conquer.

“Selling PCs to the Americans, for example, is a challenge that we took on and we are doing it.”

Stéphan French

at franceinfo

We also sell to Canada, and you know, we will even sell PCs to the Chinese. Because we have the best value for money and a design that is fabulous.

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