4 February 2011 308 words, 2 min. read

Cerdan Heritage: a very professional SME

By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab PhD in marketing, director of IntoTheMinds
Generally I’m not easily convinced by new businesses and I rarely get enthusiastic about a young SME. Well, I think I must make an exception. I was in Paris this week where I met up with Alban Cordier who co-founded […]

Generally I’m not easily convinced by new businesses and I rarely get enthusiastic about a young SME. Well, I think I must make an exception. I was in Paris this week where I met up with Alban Cordier who co-founded Cerdan Heritage with Nicolas Cerdan, Marcel Cerdan’s grandson.

Marcel Cerdan was probably one of the first sportsman (with René Lacoste) to use his name as a brand on clothes. Nicolas discovered this pretty unknown aspect of Cerdan when  reading the correspondence with Edith Piaf. This heritage became the starting point of Nicolas’ and Alban’s idea to rejuvenate the concept and launch a modern but nonetheless vintage-tainted line of sportswear clothing.

Their company has been selling products for less than 2 years and when entrepreneurs usually focus on growth and survival I was struck to talk to an entrepreneur who had already a very clear strategic vision and was very professional in all the aspects related to running the company. I will not deal here with financial aspects and will merely focus on some key points of the marketing.

Passion in general and passion for quality in particular is the cornerstone of Alban’s and Nicolas’ strategy. Not only is the highest quality required for the products themselves, but Cerdan Heritage went beyond that and ensured quality at the different touch points with the customer. I actually don’t know whether they performed a systematic analysis of the touch points but let’s admit the result is excellent. They designed a luxurious bag for the sales points, improved the packaging used for shipping articles purchased via internet and include a satisfaction survey with each order.

My take:

I’ve seldom seen such a level of professionalism at all levels of the company. With some many positive points, the odds are good that Cerdan Heritage will be successful.



Posted in Entrepreneurship.

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