AXON' takes off in the countryside around Montmirail

• Joseph PUZO
  Chairman and managing director, AXON'
  

Summary

The coming together of an experienced electronics engineer who went to INSEAD business school, and a small provincial factory without a manager, resulted in a new development which appears to been smiled upon by chance. However, is it really a question of chance that the new manager grabs opportunities, meets the right people, recruits only beginners, allows academics to run the R&D, sets up a factory on a listed site, and wins over bankers with a blowtorch ? This manager, atypical in more ways than one, is nevertheless formidably efficient. He was intelligent enough to buy the factory and expand his company both in France and abroad. What does the company make ? Top-of-the-range electronic cables. For what purpose ? Advanced interconnective solutions. In which sectors ? The army, space, aeronautics, telecommunications, the medical sector, computing and many others. Its head office ? At Montmirail, a small rural town in the south of the Marne département, halfway between Reims and Paris, where the adventure began.

Summary translated from French by Rachel MARLIN.

• The entire article was written by Lucien CLAES.

To obtain this article, you can :

• download it for free in French (PDF help) or contact ecopar@paris.ensmp.fr (Reference EV020502).

The entire article appears in French in the Journal de l'École de Paris du management N° 38.