Yves Rocher obituary
Founder of a French organic beauty empire
Company 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, it 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 Rocher neared the end of his life, his business was flourishing. It now has sales three times that of its organic beauty rival, The Body Shop, around 15,000 employees and over 2,000 stores worldwide. The Yves Rocher Group extended its reach to other companies, buying up businesses including the children's clothing line Petit Bateau in 1988.
Despite its global spread, the business never lost touch with its roots. Insisting that the ties with La Gacilly must never be severed, Rocher kept 44 hectares of land around the village that are still used to grow flowers such as calendula and nasturtium. He also opened a botanical garden there in 1975. Rocher was fiercely proud of his Breton origins and was the rightwing mayor of La Gacilly from 1962 to 2008.
Having stepped down from his role as director of the group in 1992, he was forced to return to the post two years later when his eldest son, Didier, who had taken over from him, died in a mysterious shooting accident. With his other sons, Daniel and Jacques, engaged in other pursuits, the doyen of the family skipped a generation and started preparing Didier's son for the succession. Now aged 31, Bris Rocher will take over the reins at his grandfather's company.
Yves Rocher is survived by his wife, Edith, his sons and two daughters.
• Yves Rocher, businessman, born 7 April 1930; died 26 December 2009
