DOMINIQUE PINAULT

What motivated the choice of Sion for the establishment of the company?
We set up Rexel in Switzerland in 2000 by buying out the Transelectro company. We ob-tained an advantageous tax agreement from the Valais authorities. I would say that we met and even exceeded our original targets since the company today has 120 employees. I personally threw myself into the local economy to the point that I became a member of the Valais Economic and Social Committee.

120 Valais employees?
Essentially, yes. I believe that our employees feel a certain pride to be working in an inter-national subsidiary of PPR. From this point of view, there exists a feeling of Valais patriot-ism. The personnel is very flexible and available. If you allow me the comparison, the rate of absenteeism in Sion, is half that of Geneva where it is already much lower than that in other countries. We set up continuous training modules in the Rexel group. Everyone is aware that they have to update their own employability by the transmission of innovative marketing, relational management or logistics techniques. The DAF is also Valaisan. After originally operating outside the canton after obtaining his diploma at the HEC in Lausanne, he took the opportunity to return to live in Valais.

Including innovations related to new technologies?
E-trade now accounts for 5 % of our sales turnover. We found all the technical and human skills for its development on the spot. When we recruited our team of Web-masters, we re-ceived about fifty applications, all from Sion or Sierre. The publication of our advertisement in the local newspaper, the Nouvelliste, was more than sufficient to fill the vacancies.

A favourable social climate?
In Switzerland, social law is more limited than elsewhere. The legislator prefers to leave it up to dialogue and the quest for a consensus within the companies. The context is not the same as in France, for example. Here, the public rejected the referendum on the reduction of the working week to 39 hours by 76%, leaving it at 42 or 44 hours according to agree-ments within the companies. Direct democracy develops the wisdom of public opinion.
And yet, to my knowledge, there never was a strike in the Valais, neither in the public sec-tor, nor in the private.

You are 39 years old, you are married and have a young child. What is everyday life like in Sion?
You mean after my jogging among the vines and along the Rhone? Or do you want to talk about my weekends in Crans and Verbier, just thirty minutes from Sion?
You know, we are only one-and-a-half hours from Geneva, 2 hours from Milan and even 4 hours from Paris by TGV.
It is a whole different life with other values and other virtues, with Nature just around the corner. I will not have any trouble in convincing another Frenchman to succeed me and less still getting him to come and live here given the people and authorities of the Valais.