It was because he was going around in circles during confinement that Richard Azoulay, 73 at the time, came out of retirement in Antibes. “I received an email offering a waterproof, insulating and rigid foam, like the one used for judoka mats, and it gave me the idea of using it to make a folding beach mattress. “
A material that the dynamic senior knows well for having run an upholstery foam cutting company for a long time. He created his company On the Beach in Antibes in July 2021 and imagined three outdoor comfort items: “A special, comfortable pebble mattress that can also be used as a board since it floats; another softer one for the sand and a headrest to support your head when you’re lying down.”
Richard Azoulay is inexhaustible on his mattresses “of high quality and which have a lifespan of ten years for the one adapted to sand and three to four years for the second special pebble. The foam, with a density of 30kg per m3, insulates perfectly, rinses in the shower and dries in minutes.” The sale price? €35 retail price.
The first summer, the mattresses were sold in beach shops. But passive selling, very little for him. The following season, he turned to itinerant sales on the beach and the markets. Too old, according to him, to wander on the sand and pebbles, he calls on young self-employed people to whom he sells the mattresses in boxes of twelve “at 17€ each; they take the trader’s margin.”
His intuition was good because the active sale with demonstration of the comfort of the product works well since “3,000 pieces were sold in eighteen months”, he specifies.
Personalization
For his third summer, Richard Azoulay is targeting another target: tourism professionals, hoteliers, but also municipalities and other departments. “who can personalize the mattress, put their name on it and offer it for sale in the same way as a cup or a T-shirt. I am in contact with the tourist offices of Nice, Corsica, Marina Baie des Anges in Villeneuve-Loubet or the Gulf of Saint-Tropez.”
Its goal? May his creation no longer be a seasonal product. A true one-man band very comfortable with social networks – he’s the king of LinkedIn – the entrepreneur is omnipresent whether it’s manufacturing, marketing, distribution, or even press relations. If he admits to having rejuvenated ten years since the creation of On the Beach, he also knows that at 76 years old, he will have to hand over “In one to two years, I would like to sell the company for a symbolic euro to young people to whom I might serve as a mentor. So that my idea remains”. And also for the comfort of vacationers on the beach.
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