'Ce n'était pas une entreprise comme les autres' — Manufrance died twice for that idea

Manufrance was born in 1885 in Saint-Étienne, when the gunsmiths Étienne Mimard and Pierre Blachon joined to trade in hunting rifles. The real machine was the catalog: the Tarif-Album ran to a thousand pages and half a million copies by 1908, a million by 1924 — the encyclopedia of mail order. By 1970 it went into 1.5 million households; renamed the Catalogue Manufrance in 1973 with 30,000 references. That year, at the peak, the house employed over 4,000 people, ran 64 shops, made 80,000 guns and 30,000 Omnia sewing machines a year, and its magazine Le Chasseur français sold 815,000 copies.

The decline was a refusal. Production stayed in Saint-Étienne, investment minimal; the first deficit since the 1930s came in 1975 — 4 million francs, then 38, then 110 million operating loss in 1977. Trustees concluded in August 1977: Manufrance ne peut se sauver par elle-même — it cannot save itself. A plan whose rejection would cost 1,013 jobs was refused; its author resigned. On 7 February 1979 the court declared the règlement judiciaire: 3,500 creditors, 450 million francs owed. The last manager resigned; the INA archive caught the mood: Manufrance se meurt — the filing seems inevitable.

The old lady of the cours Fauriel was not to die. After occupations and a hunger strike, the Société nouvelle Manufrance was created in May 1979 on insurance and regional capital; 30,000 people marched behind Manufrance doit vivre. Bernard Tapie's 'decentralization' plan was rejected as a dismantling; he left with only the brand's exploitation. SNM was liquidated in October 1980. Then the workers themselves founded the SCOPD cooperative in December 1980 — capital 40 million francs, half their own severance pay. An investment to keep the work, not a financial placement, its defenders said.

It was not enough. Deficits ran 1.8 million francs in 1981, 34.3 in 1982, 78.6 in 1983; the subsidies stopped. In April 1985 the SCOPD was liquidated — not four years old. The old shell followed in 1986; in 1988 the brand and patents went to auction for 3.5 million francs. The trials ended in June 1993 with all seventeen acquitted, and the defence said the line the story is kept by: Ce n'était pas une entreprise comme les autres. Elle n'était pas là pour faire des profits, mais pour maintenir l'emploi. In 2011 Saint-Étienne kept the saga across fifteen sites — catalog, slogan, and wound.