It’s well known that at age 50 people’s lives change. Jean Gatignol confirms it, taking over from Pierre Carestia last January as head of the Grasse company of the same name. Carestia SA, a leading printer of smelling papers and cards for the fragrance industry has carved out a solid reputation for itself in this field for the past 100 years, seeking innovation not only in the material to be scented, a glue-free, odorless paper, but in the shape of the paper as well. And in addition these are offered with odorless gold pressing, a Carestia exclusive. Trained at ISIPCA, Jean Gatignol started in sales at L’Oréal before joining the fragrance industry at Dragoco France then moving to its US subsidiary. Eight years later, he was back in France at Symrise, then at Takasago. In 2008, he dove into the Carestia file with interest. An investment fund offered him the head position, and now here he is at the job, between Grasse and Paris, with interesting projects to carry to completion: international deployment, expansion of the packaging business, design of a new product range. “Our original job is to perfume smelling papers, but today we offer a pre-scented strip to be inserted in a magazine or to distribute at sales points.” Innovation is handled in house, but some thinking is done with graphics students at the IUT in Reims to develop new forms and materials, the fragrance papers of the future.

Sabine Chabbert

Beyond Beauty MAG #28