Who are we ?
HENRY FRANC SAS: a sales agency
As sales agency, HENRY FRANC SAS is working as the externalized sales team of each of its industrial partners, also called principals. Instead of a distributor or a reseller, the company does not realize any trade or resell operation: A sales agency is prospecting and exchanging with customers for one or several principals.
In order to optimize our work, we are fully transparent in our daily sales with our principals (industrial producers): We communicate to them the market informations on a regular basis, so that they can adapt their offer. Our principals are knowing our customers, and are regularly visiting them with our sales managers. They decide themselves the prices, and are directly invoicing and delivering the customers.
Our job relies on building direct and durable relationships between our customers and our principals. Our success is entirely made on long-term trust.
Our customers and principals are both finding advantages in their daily work with HENRY FRANC SAS :
- We propose to our customers a reactive and stable sales team, competitive direct prices, a technical and logistical support and quality products.
- We offer to our principals a ready-to-use sales team, efficient and economic, a durable commercial relationship (more than 30 years fr our main partners), an access to our customer database (50 years of continuous update on our main markets), and a full coverage of the French territory.
HENRY FRANC SAS has been working on the quality procedures since 1997. We are now one of the few French sales agencies to be ISO 9000 certified. This ISO certification facilitates our integration in the quality management of our principals. In addition, our organization and methods are constantly optimized in an ever moving environment.
Our activity
Today, HENRY FRANC SAS is organized in 4 main departments :
- Coatings (raw materials for paints, varnishes, inks, adhesives)
- Oleochemistry and Vegetable-based Chemicals (Vegetable oils and derivative products)
- Packaging (buckets, boxes, drums, mainly for the paint industry)
- Technical textiles (Coated textiles, Protective fabrics Kevlar® – Nomex® , Polyamide and polyester fabrics)
Our history : a family business
Pre-flight inspection: Henry FRANC and his airplane, 1965
In July 1961, Henry FRANC bought to the lyonnais broker Charles BERNARD a portfolio of industrial representation built since 1932.
The activity is developing quickly, so in January 1963 he asked his brother Michel FRANC to assist him. At that time, Henry FRANC is the CEO of a company dedicated to sales, to the for French and European industrial partners. The first exclusive partnerships are signed between the company and these principals. For them, the company HENRY FRANC will develop customers and revenue, and ensure all tasks assigned to the commercial service (Prospecting, Product promotion, Response to tenders, Monitoring of orders and deliveries, Technical support).
Henry FRANC is fond of aviation. He built two airplanes and he accidentally died at the command of one of them on 10 September 1966. His wife, Béatrice FRANC, takes the presidency of the company, transformed into SA, and administration, while Michel FRANC takes operational responsibility.
The company, whose offices are located Rue de la République in Lyon, moved in 1970, and moved to 19 rue Marc Antoine Petit, behind Perrache.
In January 1993, the FRANC family wants to sell the company. HENRY FRANC SA is bought by Bruno GINDRE, chemical engineer and sales director of one of the leading companies in textile industry in the Lyon region.
Historically limited to the Rhone-Alpes region, the activity of HENRY FRANC SA gradually spread to the whole of France, and new international partnerships are concluded.
Responding favourably to external requests, and strong of 10 years experience in the industry, Bruno GINDRE creates the industrial textiles department.
In 1997, he launched the quality process and quickly obtains ISO 9002 certification
In August 1998, the company moved its headquarters to La Mulatière along the Saône river.
It is transformed in SAS on 17 December 2003, thus adapting to the benefits offered by the new legislation.
July 1, 2009, the company moved to new headquarters and offices in VILLETTE D’ANTHON, 10 minutes from the TGV station and the international airport of Lyon St Exupery.
From 2009 to 2012, the company continues to optimize its IT tool for increasing productivity and securing the operations.
In H1 2012, the company studied the complete outsourcing of its IT system, which is operational on 1 January 2013. The operation of the company is then completely paperless. It is based on the combination of two software, a CRM * and an Electronic Document Management. (* “Customer relationship management” tool for managing and monitoring customer): The company becomes even more efficient on its historical markets.