Founder of a French
organic beauty empireCompany legend has it that while still a young man, Yves Rocher visited a healer in his native Brittany. Upon returning to the family home, he whipped up a mixture made of buttercups and other plants and, soon after, perfected its use: as a soothing ointment for haemorrhoid sufferers. Whether or not this tale would stand up to close scrutiny is uncertain, but Rocher's discovery of the cream is unquestionable. Rocher, who has died aged 79, started selling the natural remedy through magazine classifieds and found it a runaway success. The man who would go on to build a global empire of high-quality beauty products with annual sales of €2bn and shops in more than 80 countries had started out by curing piles.Rocher's early fascination with the natural world and its potential for use in cosmetics came to define his eponymous company, which committed itself to the ecological cause long before it became a mainstream philosophy. And his eye for the appeal of mail-order anticipated internet
shopping by decades.As a young boy growing up in rural southern Brittany in the 1930s and 40s, Rocher was inspired by the plants, herbs and trees around him. When he started his company in 1959, iUt was by drawing on the ingredients provided by the fields around his village of La Gacilly that he created a new kind of "botanical beauty" product. At a time when good cosmetics were reserved for the elite, Rocher said he wanted to give every Frenchwoman the chance to buy some reasonably priced, high-quality make-up.In 1965, as his mail-order strategy was taking off, he published a pamphlet entitled the Green Book of Beauty; it has since been translated into dozens of languages. By 1969, the first Yves Rocher boutique had opened in Paris – far from the company's Breton homeland but in the heart of
France's burgeoning consumer market of liberated young women. More outlets followed and soon the brand was setting up shop overseas.By the time Roc ...
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