With a shared passion for art, history and chocolate, two brothers from Versailles set out on a gourmet entrepreneurial venture in 2019 by founding Maison Bonange. Products handmade in the heart of the “Cité Royale” from high quality, all-organic ingredients: such is the secret of the artistic, noble and tasty chocolates inspired by the flavours of yesteryear that they offer.
Proclaimed as French art and history chocolates, with recipes inspired by the flavours of yesteryear, they offer a journey back in time by deliciously revisiting our history of France.
Here is a look back on an adventure which began early a few years ago and which has already featured a first participation at Natexpo last year, with Frédéric Jousset, CEO of Maison Bonange.
You exhibited in the Incubator in 2020: what was your company like back then?
At the time, Maison Bonange was a chocolate making start-up which was not even a year old. There were only two employees, with a passion for chocolate and the dream of developing our company. To say that we had limited resources is an understatement: we did everything with what we could scrape together, and our communications budget was inexistent.
In what way was this exhibition format an opportunity for you?
To be honest, the Incubator format was perfect: it allowed us to come face-to-face with buyers, understand how retail networks worked through a wealth of information gleaned through interviews, adjust our strategy and our go-to-market… find vendors and also suppliers, all at a bargain price!
Today you are exhibiting in the Big Splash at Natexpo? What does this new step represent in your strategy?
You’ve said it yourself: it’s a new step. The very flexible Incubator format last time allowed us to develop with peace of mind, understand how the show worked and take advantage of it. Since then, our company has grown and it was an obvious choice for us to come back to Natexpo in Paris in 2021, in spite of an unprecedented public health crisis.
Today, there are nine of us in the company, with the limitations of a developing but still small company, and our communications budget is still not very substantial. The Big Splash is a good compromise: a sort of intermediate step between a conventional stand and the Incubator. Which is perfectly suited to our situation.
What impact has Natexpo had on your company’s development?
Despite planning our show at the very last minute, I have to say that we were very surprised by the feedback. In concrete terms, we have developed our sales with a major organic retail network since the first edition. I think that we would have had much more impact with better planning, and so we have learnt a lesson from the first edition! I would strongly recommend to all organic start-ups that they test the experience of the Natexpo Incubator: it is quite simply a must, a unique event.
From 24 to 26 October, don’t miss the artistic chocolate bars in the Big Splash at Natexpo. In the meantime, you can rediscover their story on their website.