Interview on innovation with Viviane Lipskier

November 9, 2021, Paris. A launch has its share of emotions but also of wonderful meetings. Viviane Lipskier, a specialist in DNVBs (Digital Native Vertical Brands) interviewed Ganaël Bascoul, who took over the COTTAN House, for her long format called OCULUS available on Linkedin and on Medium.

This long and dense exchange covers a very broad spectrum of subjects: innovation and sustainable development, stochastic and multiverse, selective distribution and e-commerce, brand studios, and aggregators... But of course, and above all, the COTTAN House. Here are a few selected pieces of this interview that we invite you to browse through.

On innovative approaches to new challenges, such is naturalness in the cosmetic formulation: 

"If we want to change our approach to a problem, we have to change the method. And when I see that to formulate "clean" products, everyone takes the same skeleton of formula and replaces point to point the petrochemical ingredients by ingredients of natural origin, I find it strange. When you can do it in a different way."

On the vision that a House must have to nourish its research and creativity over time: 

"When we see the greatest Houses, they had an intellectual postulate, a vision of women, or a vision of beauty, or a strong founding concept. And in our case, I think that indeed, very early, Cottan created very modern formulation solutions and that for contextual or historical reasons and not objective reasons, they have been forgotten. He brought types of galenic and types of formulations that respond extraordinarily well to the issues of natural and sustainable development. So yes, the vision, which carried this company and its creation, and which carries its rebirth today, has a real reason to exist and it responds to the challenges of the sector."

Finally, on the unspeakable joy of imagining a parallel between two time periods so far away, in the same streets, in Paris: 

Yes, there is poetry in saying that in a few weeks, a woman will have in her handbag a Cottan cream in Paris, where 150 years ago, it already happened.

Many thanks to Viviane for the richness of this dialogue - and for her immense patience in transcribing this long interview, which we invite you to read and comment on if you wish to discuss these subjects. 

NB : And if you prefer audio formats, find us on Beauty Toaster about the backstage of COTTAN's resurgence.