• A 43-year-old Vendée has created an eco-responsible, designer and modular picnic table.

  • Launched in the midst of a health and economic crisis, his business is still struggling to take off.

  • Crowdfunding has been launched on Ulule, which ends in five days.

For Mathieu Decottignies, this 43-year-old Vendée, the awareness arose “three or four years ago” during a Sunday on the Ile de Ré in a postcard setting. “We were supposed to eat in a restaurant on the port of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, but all the tables were packed. My wife suggests that I take the blue picnic table bought a few days before in a supermarket… ”The small family settles down next to the channel. “We were a hundred times better there than on a terrace, crowded with lots of other people. "The idyllic setting does not, however, prevent this former employee of the children's textile industry, sensitive to eco-responsibility, from pestering ..." I said to myself: "But how can one be in such a beautiful place and use a table made in China,shoddy and plastic? We had bought ugly and non-recyclable material to go to a beautiful place. "

The father then took it into his head to invent an environmentally friendly picnic table after realizing that there was nothing like it on the market. In February 2020, he founded the Dezyco company in Fontenay-le-Comte in Vendée. With the help of an engineering firm, he imagines an eco-responsible and designer table (with four integrated stools). “It is designed to fit into different interiors,” explains Mathieu Decottignies. Picnic table, low, side and folding, the product is modular and above all environmentally friendly. "We have removed 95% of the plastics from the version of the" famous "blue table, insists the head of the Vendée company. There are four small plastic washers, that's all. »The product is made of wood and aluminum,the pieces all coming from the Pays-de-la-Loire region. “Our table is more stable, more robust and is not disposable. This is why it is also eco-responsible. There is no planned obsolescence with it. "

Campsites and interested companies

Winner of the Vendée entrepreneur network in 2019, the entrepreneur has benefited, in addition to financial aid, from the support and advice of a business manager.

A particularly valuable help when one embarks on such a complicated health and economic context.

The first confinement in March 2020 slowed down the technical development of the product, the second at the end of the year, commercial growth and, during the last early April, orders from some customers were postponed.

“I took all the waves, it's a real battle every day.

"

Mathieu Decottignies launched an Ulule crowdfunding campaign which ends on Sunday.

Eighteen tables are sold, there are still seven left to meet the objective of 10,000 euros.

Its product, which costs 429 euros (preferential rates on Ulule), has also caught the attention of campsites (5 tables sold) and certain companies (3 sold).

Society

Vendée: But who is Imi, the eco-responsible electric scooter?

Society

Pays-de-la-Loire: They invent Kojo, an eco-responsible construction game made in France

  • Environment

  • Camping

  • Society

  • ecology