The vacuum cleaner, the ballpoint pen, the vegetable mill, the steam iron or the contact lenses… All these devices, fully integrated into our daily lives, have one thing in common: They have been awarded at the Concours Lépine. Examples that thousands of inventors have tried to follow since 1901 and the creation of the competition by the famous prefect Lépine.
But among the winners and their creations, many have since fallen back into anonymity. Because if the announcement of the winner of the prize of the President of the Republic is an event every year, the famous grail is often only a stage, or even a start for these inventors.
No more “Géo Trouvetou”, make way for specialists
If the image of Epinal of the hard-skinned prolific inventor, it is now a thousand leagues from the profile of the selected. “Many still imagine the candidates as retirees, “Géo Trouvetou”, who spend their time and their imagination in their garage. It’s an outdated image,” explains Barbara Dorey, director of the Lépine competition.
For at least two decades, candidates for the supreme grail have been in their forties and more often have an engineering degree than a simple passion for DIY. “The last jack-of-all-trades who won the gold medal may have been Raoul Parienti in 2010, but he was already a renowned engineer,” recalls Barbara Dorey.
Now, inventors are more often specialists in their field and arrive with already highly developed projects. They see in the competition a recognition and a real springboard
“A tremendous promotion” and a “springboard”
Jean-Louis Hecht, baker and winner in 2014 with his Panivending, a baguette cooker and vending machine, testifies to this: “We created this machine in 2001. But industrialists began to copy the concept. The Lépine competition allowed us to identify ourselves as the true inventors. Now retired, he continues to market his machine despite the difficulties linked to the component crisis and energy inflation: “The Lépine competition is a wonderful promotional platform. This gives you indelible notoriety. »
A notoriety that Jean de Boisredon and Thibaut Louvet do not deny, two engineers who won in 2021 with Caps Me, reusable coffee capsules: “Before the competition, we had sold 3,000 boxes and reused 1 million capsules in one year. Two years later, no less than 20,000 customers have been won over and 8 million capsules have been reused! »
A boom which cannot be attributed solely to their victory but which marked the beginning of a real acceleration. “This very quickly opened the doors to a major brand like Nature & Découvertes,” confides Jean de Boisredon. A success that is confirmed since the young engineer is pleased to have entered into a partnership with the Fnac-Darty group this week, the day before the 2023 edition. A nice wink.
Raphaël Mille also does not hide the impact of the silver medal obtained in 2022 for Bloon ball seat: “In addition to being rewarding for the teams working on it, it is obviously a considerable asset in our communication. »
No money, no support
All highlight the prestige of the famous “Lépine” tablet. But this is not enough. Even highly symbolic, a prize in the Lépine competition does not include any monetary compensation or special support for the winners. “A former winner had told me that it was a big walk but that it was only the first”, laughs Frédéric Leybold, title holder of the grand prize with Geocoeur, a defibrillator which alerts people nearby in case of cardiac arrest.
Nurse in intensive care and firefighter, he confirms that the most important thing is above all to transform the test: “Lépine, it’s a week of madness in the media, but afterwards we have to do something about it. Frédéric Leybold then used his “medal on the business card” to meet investors. But another difficulty presented itself to him: “I thought of developing the concept with the association to which I belong. But to obtain grants, loans from the bank or support from the BPI, you have to start a business. “It’s true that not everyone has the entrepreneurial spirit and that can prove to be an obstacle,” explains Barbara Dotey.
Obstacle overcome for the nurse, now at the head of the company Hekatech, created last September with two partners. However, he does not plan to change careers: “I like my job as a nurse, I do not intend to leave it. I am a business owner in my free time. »
Learn to run a business
Although she ran a brewery for more than twenty years, Agnès Lowe, inventor of the Papado clip-on toilet bowl, recognizes the difficulty of bouncing back from success after her silver medal in 2013: “I was a business leader , that I know. But production, logistics, packaging… We had to learn everything because we are not accompanied. This medal is up to us to exploit. »
We must believe that Agnès Lowe learns quickly since with the creation of a website, partnerships with retirement homes, her company has already sold 15,000 toilet bowls, employs three people and has just been referenced among the suppliers of the Hospitals of Paris. Enough to give high hopes to the candidates currently exhibited at the Paris Fair who must wait impatiently for the award ceremony on May 8th.