Forget competition for a moment: your rivals are your allies in the transition. The consulting firm (RE)SET supports companies that want to transform their value chain collectively to limit risks and accelerate the process. A small revolution.
"Too risky." How many times have you heard a company justify its climate inaction by the financial risks it would incur by transforming? Many are content with a step-by-step policy, overwhelmed by the prospect of upending their value chain.
Yet there is a way to limit the risks of the transition: cooperation. Just as climate action cannot simply be yet another checkmark on our personal to-do lists (organic products + peeing in the shower + biking ≠ planet saved), it is of little use for one company to make its transition if others do not follow. Worse: in an unstable and hyper-competitive environment, acting alone is almost always doomed to fail.
Cross-sectoral cooperation is no small feat for companies, but consortia and collectives are multiplying to support the revolution. And while no industrial sector escapes these issues, some have a head start. The cosmetics sector is one of these pioneers. In June 2021, FEBEA, the French Federation of Beauty Companies, launched its Plastic Act, with the goal of moving faster than what the AGEC law (Anti-Waste and Circular Economy) requires: reuse 20% of packaging, develop bulk sales, reduce the volume of plastic packaging by 15% through eco-design and substitution with new materials… All by 2025. The cosmetics sector thus became the first sector to collectively set quantitative targets.
Orchestrating this large-scale work that made waves is a young consulting firm specializing in the transition, (RE)SET, founded in 2019 and led by Géraldine Poivert. Since 2019, (RE)SET has set itself the mission of moving the needle in ten strategic sectors (packaging, cosmetics, furniture, textiles...), working both with individual clients and in consortia. (RE)SET's slogan: "cooperation is the new competition.".
A consortium to limit risks
Last year, fourteen companies in the sector (Chanel, L'Oréal, Sisley, L'Occitane…) re-contacted (RE)SET to form a consortium, Pulp In Action. The objective: to agree on the development of new cellulose fiber materials as substitutes for plastic, in order to tackle the thorny issue of cosmetic packaging head-on.
The consortium tackles the packaging problem at the source, i.e., in the laboratories, to develop innovative materials with properties adapted to cosmetic products. (RE)SET listens to the needs expressed by the companies, organizes consultations, sources fiber materials, and ensures they are functional for the companies. After a first year of consultation and sourcing, about fifteen packaging prototypes are already under study.
While the urgency of phasing out plastic is no longer debatable, implementing this noble intention is a headache for a cosmetics company. "Plastic is a fantastic material, with properties difficult to find elsewhere," acknowledges Géraldine Poivert. The entire industry is built on the hegemony of plastic : "even the testing protocols for packaging that we are supposed to rely on were designed for plastic and are not adapted to new materials. Everything needs to be redone. The industrial changes we must undertake are true revolutions."
It is in the face of this mountain to climb that uniting becomes relevant. "You can't think about packaging alone in your corner," insists the founder of (RE)SET: " we need to position ourselves at the sector level to decide on new standards. The cosmetics industry had this intuition very early on. »
"You don't build an armada for a niche"
The risks of the transition are multiple. First, innovation is expensive. So better to join forces, especially when it's the monopoly of plastic established in packaging for decades that needs to be challenged. "Then, there is always the risk that the consumer will not follow," notes Géraldine Poivert. "For any innovation, you need a market. If a company is the only one offering a new product and there is no massive movement to support the consumer, there is a high chance it will lose." Finally, suppliers will be reluctant if a company plays the lone wolf: "at the industrial level, you're not going to change a machine tool for 5% of the market. You don't build an entire armada for a niche."
The consortium thus allows companies to "de-risk innovation." "Competitors have a common interest, which is also the general interest: that of redefining standards." This is what happened at the time of the digital revolution, compares Géraldine Poivert: "at the beginning of the Internet, we had to agree on a set of protocols. We are at that moment in the environmental transition."
For Géraldine Poivert, cooperation makes sense at the beginning of the transition, "when we are still clearing the ground." The logic is simple: "Before competing on the football field, you need to create the football field. That won't prevent companies from differentiating themselves later, but you have to go through a phase of defining standards." So, sit at the same table as your competitors for a few months, or even a few years.
"A Harlequin costume"
Cooperation has become a mandatory step for every sector, but it remains a balancing act. "It's never easy to run a consortium," readily admits Géraldine Poivert. "It means creating a collective dynamic with people who have their egos, their habits, their corporate culture."
This is all the more complex as the fourteen brands of Pulp In Action have very diverse profiles: international brands or those more focused on France, luxury houses or mass-market clientele… Chanel, L'Occitane, and Sisley do not have the same priorities.
"The idea is to create a Harlequin costume," explains Géraldine Poivert, "so that everyone leaves the consortium with the same costume without having given up their identity." A patchwork that (RE)SET seems to have succeeded in creating, as the fourteen companies have just signed up for a second year of work.
« The cosmetics sector dares to play collectively »
According to Géraldine Poivert, the cosmetics sector is particularly well-positioned on this issue. "Cosmetics is a sector that has the resources, that dares to play collectively when necessary, and that, through its culture of innovation, can be a driving force in the environmental transition."
Géraldine recalls her pride in having been contacted by FEBEA at the time of the Plastic Act: "it was the first sectoral professional organization to create an action plan on plastic, and the State was later inspired by it for its sectoral roadmaps recommended by ADEME."
Is competition outdated?
2025, 2030, 2050… The deadlines given to companies to transform their activities are short. National and European directives are multiplying, and now there are more risks in doing nothing than in transforming. In this time of urgency, siloed functioning no longer allows sectors to transform quickly enough. Beyond cosmetics, some groups have clearly understood this. Nestlé Waters, PepsiCo, and Suntory have joined forces with the supplier Carbios to accelerate the development of enzymatic plastic recycling. Energy suppliers and truck manufacturers are coming together to develop hydrogen trucks. Since 2021, ADEME has also been offering "sectoral roadmaps" to implement cooperation within an industry.
In this revolution of relationships between companies, (RE)SET offers the reassuring perspective of 360° support. The "integrated" consulting firm implements the company's transformation in each of its phases, from R&D to industrial deployment, including strategic thinking. It's impossible to avoid such a comprehensive overview if you want to go beyond a superficial transformation, insists Géraldine Poivert.
But while (RE)SET offers an ambitious approach to companies, it takes care to distinguish itself from certain environmentalist discourses. "At (RE)SET, we do the transition for real. We believe in green growth and solutions-based ecology." There is no question of talking about degrowth for this firm, which makes a point of addressing companies in their own language, that of business. A positioning that seems successful since it has allowed (RE)SET to gain the trust of dozens of companies, from Carrefour to Decathlon, including Hachette and Orange.
Some groups go even further by putting their innovations open source, available to everyone: this is the case of L'Oréal, which in 2020 gave access to its product life cycle analysis tool for cosmetics, SPICE, so that all companies can carry out their diagnosis for free. It is also onopen source that Time for the Planet, a company aiming to raise 1 billion euros to finance 100 companies for the transitionis also betting. For this company with a somewhat unique model, competition is simply outdated : it offers open access to the innovations it finances so that they can be replicated as quickly as possible, given the climate urgency. From TV sets to LinkedIn posts, the company's founders never tire of repeating: "The time is no longer for competition but for cooperation."
