Goodbye wage labor, hello craftsmanship! These executives are on their own

Hello craftsmanship! After many years of employment, some in large international companies, these executives have recently taken over a business and a craft activity.

The context of the health crisis has often been a trigger, a spark for their taking action. Two motivations come back: to be your own boss and to have fun.

After thirty years as an executive in an international group, Valérie Malfay wondered about her last ten years of professional life. A year and a half ago, she took over Art et Encadrement, a craft business in Yvelines. “I wanted to be my own boss and have fun; combine sales and production, rather in a craftsmanship,” testifies this ESSEC graduate.

Art framing meets his criteria: settling in without significant investment and exercising with acceptable physical constraints when you are over 50 years old. “When I left for training, a coaching CAP, I was determined to create my own structure, with a gradual increase in load, at a pace that was not necessarily sustained,” she confides. But while she was doing internships in the studio, one thing became obvious: loneliness was going to weigh on her. What prefer a recovery to a creation. “I couldn't see myself taking someone on from scratch,” she explains.

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Located on the website of the National Institute of Crafts (INMA), the seller has herself gone through a retraining. She has been looking to sell for just over six months and is claiming half a year of sales. The bank is ready to follow. Valérie Malfay will even be able to hire a training colleague.

An internship in the company in question will allow him to validate his choice, understand the customers and meet the suppliers. “The first advantage of the recovery is to already have a clientele, but it can also be a disadvantage when you are new to a trade, she points out. His greatest satisfaction is to have managed to maintain activity despite the brakes and the accelerators in an uncertain context. “The subject now is development,” concludes Valérie Malfay.

Before Covid-19, Stéphane Lucas was one of those senior managers from the Paris region who constantly traveled the world. With the first confinement, this CEO of a subsidiary of a large foreign group suddenly found himself at home. And “the fact of no longer being on planes has opened up new horizons for me”, ironically the fifty-year-old. Result: from the summer of 2020, he begins to negotiate his departure. His thinking is not completely new: in 2017, thanks to a fairly successful LBO, he let himself imagine taking over a business.

“I always thought that my target would be a retirement,” he explains. Starting a business was not an option for me; I was afraid of not necessarily being better than the others at recruiting, especially for a young company, and I had to earn money quickly”. Following this logic, the engineer stops on the heating companies, in B to C "to bring in cash quickly" and automatically excludes the heat pump, too disputed.

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Let's go to the Manche department where a second home can serve as a rear base. In addition to the level of structuring of the company and the management tools, the selection attaches to the personality of the transferor. It will therefore be Cheminées Fortin, 8 employees, for an undisclosed amount. The former CEO spent 2 and a half months in the company before the official sale, in November 2021.

Stéphane Lucas had met the employees in September and explained to them "the same thing as to the bankers", insisting on the fact that he would need everyone. Covered by Pôle Emploi, the new little boss benefits from an ARE allowance (aid for returning to work) over a little less than 3 years. His wife also entered the business and took over the fairly comfortable salary of the seller. For Cheminées Fortin, all the indicators are now green.

Coming from a family of craftsmen, Peggy Croizé congratulates herself on "having dared and trusted her intuition". Consultant, then HR manager in an aeronautical company, she feels that she is withering, from questioning to loss of meaning. “I was less and less connected with the field, I spent my time filling in Excel tables and doing reports,” she says. In 2017, when she was not yet in her forties, she began her reflection and decided on a CAP in seat upholstery. After an agreed break, she managed to have her 1,200 hours of training covered over 9 months.

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His plan is then to sell his services to upholsterers, to unload them punctually during their load peaks. But she is doing a final internship in a structure in which one of the two partners will soon decide to sell her his shares. We are in 2020.

Since then, she has divided her executive salary by 3. Peggy Croizé can partly make up the difference thanks to former placements, but defends her new balance. “In the evening, when I go home, I don't work. And when I get up at dawn to go and install curtains at the Banque de France, I'm happy", she slips in with a thought for those who invited her to "not waste the chance of having made studies, to have a nice office and to have a little power".

The story of Jean-Yves Drevet nuances the previous ones. This former HRD tried the adventure of retraining but came back. After nearly twenty-five years of career in a large company, Jean-Yves Drevet responds to the sirens of the competition, but quickly bites his fingers. Here he is looking for a new job when the first confinement falls. And “in June 2020, the only positions I was offered were to implement social plans”, he underlines. He is 49 years old, his morale more than wavering, but his old dream of cooking resurfaces. “I said to myself that I had to start from scratch and train myself,” he recalls.

The cooking training provided at the Paris School of Table Trades (EPMT) dedicated to adults is concentrated over one year and will allow them to start work-study, 2 days at school, 3 days in a restaurant, compensated by Pôle Emploi. "I went from HR manager to vegetable peeler and, like everyone else, I accepted orders with 'yes, boss'", he says.

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Ten hours a day in the kitchen, familiar working conditions and the prospect of having to wait a few years before becoming chef, when he had just celebrated his 50th birthday, led him to consider taking over a restaurant, once he had obtained his CAP.

But the second lockdown falls and he lets go, to accept a transition management mission, and finally rediscover his old job with joy. He is now carrying out an 8-month mission “which makes sense”, specifies Jean-Yves Drevet.