| | |
| | |
 | You and Yours - Transcript BBC Radio 4 |
| |
| Print This Page |
| |
| |
| TX: 17.11.05 - Perfume Packaging and L'Occitane PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON |
| |
| THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON The French company L'Occitane has had Braille on its packaging for five years now. The labelling developed from a chance encounter in one of its stores. It was the beginning though of a series of initiatives to build links between the company and people who are blind. We sent Kent Barker to sniff out this story at the L'Occitane factory and headquarters in Manosque in Provence in South East France. ACTUALITY FROM FACTORY BARKER It's not the noise of this factory that assaults the senses it's the smell - perfumes, essences, oils, particularly lavender and verbena fill the interior. MONTECENOS This is where we are making soap, manufacturing soap. We produce 90 tonne of soaps every month and people here are working three times eight hours a day. BARKER Three shifts a day? MONTECENOS Yes. BARKER Patricia Montecenos is giving a guided tour. MONTECENOS Well here you have all the labelled stock and you can see some Braille on some labels. BARKER Almost every one of L'Occitane's 500 products includes Braille on its packaging. According to UK managing director, Kit Bradon, it was the brainchild of the company's founder - Olivier Baussan. BRADON The story is that Olivier was in one of our shops in Paris one day and a blind lady came into the shop and he noticed that she was having quite a lot of difficulty in telling what was in one bottle from what was in another bottle. And he went away and thought about that for a while and thought there must be an easy solution to this. So he started to think about whether we could actually emboss Braille lettering on to our labels on the packaging. MONTECENOS This area is the half-finished products. We use some soap contractors for some special packing. Most of the time it's visible people [indistinct words] workshops. BRADON From the moment we started putting Braille on packaging, which was I think in 1998 obviously people were interested in that idea and we started getting more contact with blind associations round the world and various charities that try to work with sight impaired or blind people. And a group of employees got together and started a charity which we call Provence dans tous les sens, which runs a school for young sight impaired or blind people and teaches them in a short course the basics of being perfumers. ACTUALITY - PERFUMERY CLASS BARKER A few miles north of L'Occitane's Manosque factory and headquarters is an ancient priory. It's here that the perfume school holds its classes. ACTUALITY - PERFUMERY CLASS MONTECENOS We are in Salagon Priory, which is an ethnological museum in Mane near Forcalquier. And in this space you have some gardens of all the aromatic plants from Provence and there are also gardens with plants from all over the world. BARKER Patricia Montecenos is president of the charity Provence dans tous le sens that organises the short perfume courses for young blind and partially sighted people. MONTECENOS So they have all the gardens marked in Braille, all the plants, and also all the maps before you enter the gardens in relief. They have also an exhibition regarding lavender made for blind people, so everything is in relief, you can smell a lot of things. And L'Occitane sponsor this historical monument to do all this. ACTUALITY - PERFUMERY CLASS BARKER This afternoon the group of teenagers is being shown how to distil the essences of lavender. Their teacher is Celine Terrice. TERRICE This group comes from Marseilles to a centre [indistinct words] - people are blind, blind people. So we want by this session also to them possibility to learn scents and [indistinct words] BARKER Like much to do with L'Occitane the concept of the courses for the blind children came from founder Olivier Baussan and was taken up by staff at the company, led by Patricia Montecenos. MONTECENOS When Olivier had the idea to create this school it was the moment for me to say okay let's go. And I tried to motivate different people in L'Occitane and we did it ourselves during the weekend and we tried to contact a lot of blind schools and one of those, the perfumer of L'Occitane who is called [name], he's a perfumer in Grasse, he say okay I'll come and I'll explain the work of perfumer and he gave them a lot of tips. Now the company give us an amount of money every year and we do - we sponsor exactly what we really want to choose and we are sure that everything goes for the blind children. BARKER An opportunity enthusiastically embraced by the young people themselves. CHILDREN THROUGH TRANSLATOR We've learned to develop one of our five senses, that is smell, and that's brought feelings with it. It's helped us to really develop, in my case already, my sense of smell. And it's been really good, I've learnt lots of things and am able to identify the smell of several things. Since I've been coming here for these three days and from the start I wanted this to be my career and this has been good for that, for the good reason that when you are blind it's even better in that I'm finding out about perfumes and you develop your other four senses. I've loved coming here because if everything goes well I can work in the perfume trade. BARKER The company's policies are praised by Britain 's Royal National Institute for the Blind. Business development manage Sioban Brewester says more firms should be following suit, especially when it comes to including Braille on packaging. BREWESTER In terms of packaging there's a lot more that can be done by many, many organisations. Not just by looking at Braille but also the print and colour contrasts on packaging. We're very pleased by L'Occitane's activity in putting the Braille on the packaging. BARKER If I were to say to you that L'Occitane themselves said that they don't have any special provision for employing blind people does that surprise you? BREWESTER It wouldn't particularly surprise me, not because I have direct understanding of their own employment polices but from my more general point of view I certainly know there is a hesitancy from some organisations to employ people with disabilities and in particular people who are blind and partially sighted. BARKER From its base in the Provencal countryside L'Occitane has achieved a rapid growth over the past decade. Sales have risen from around £6 million to £200 million a year and its products can now be found in more than 600 outlets in 60 countries. But does co-owner and UK MD Kit Bradon believe multinationalism is compatible with the company's ethical concerns. You've seen phenomenal growth or achieved phenomenal growth in the last 10 years and you have ambitious plans to go on continuing that: can you afford the frills which these might be seen as? BRADON I think the straight answer to that is yes. I mean we really believe that the special qualities of L'Occitane are this connection with the seasons, with the harvests and with this part of this world and if you believe these things you've got to show your belief through a lot of different things. It's an ethical policy and it's also a practical and commercial policy, it's both. ROBINSON Kit Bradon, the UK managing director of L'Occitane ending that report by Kent Barker. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
| About the BBC | Help | Terms of Use | Privacy & Cookies Policy |
