Meeting with Olivier Maschino, President of Clareo Lighting

Batinfo: Can you introduce Clareo?

Olivier Maschino: In 2012 I launched Clareo Lighting with Damien Sipos based on the observation that lighting was going to switch to LED technology. The lighting market was open enough for new entrants to conquer the market and the ecological scope of LED made it a fashionable product. LEDs have a better lifespan, better recyclability and more efficient consumption than traditional lighting. This ecological dimension of LED is a value to which we were attached and which motivated us to create Clareo.

Clareo is now made up of more than 100 employees and we will celebrate our 12th anniversary in January 2024.

Between 2012 and 2023 we achieved fairly regular growth of 30% each year with today more than 300 orders per day.

Despite the Covid-19, electronic materials, international transport and raw materials crises, we coped and managed despite these crises to maintain our 30% growth thanks to rapid and effective decision-making.

Batinfo: Where is Clareo today?

Olivier Maschino: Today we are manufacturers of LED products on the French, Belgian, Swiss, Luxembourg and Moroccan markets with a turnover of 40 million euros. We have a design office made up of 15 engineers to strengthen our expertise as a manufacturer. They participate in particular in the design of tailor-made products.

Our strength also lies in our cutting-edge logistics which allows us to deliver to our customers like a distributor. Our delivery is done within 12 hours throughout France (weekends and nights included) and for several weeks we have been offering flash delivery within 4 hours. This fast delivery is already effective in the Paris region today.

Obviously, to be able to achieve such rapid deliveries, we must have an efficient organization and very responsive information systems to circulate information from the customer order to the logistics platform. For example, Clareo has designed tailor-made software to optimize its stock management. The tool relies on probabilistic distribution and artificial intelligence to very precisely anticipate customer needs and avoid stock shortages as much as possible.

Our teams are also trained and well-versed to successfully meet these deadlines.

We also offer premium delivery with our own drivers for an even higher level of service.

Batinfo: where is your CSR policy?

Olivier Maschino: We are very focused on this topic, with a full-time person responsible for this topic. Clareo was awarded the silver medal by EcoVadis for its CSR approach and notably received a gold level for its social aspect and its responsible purchasing. We are recognized on the market and by our customers as one of the most advanced players in this area and to continue to progress we even offer training to our customers in terms of CSR.

For example, we are developing delivery with electric vehicles for 2024. On deliveries, we have removed all orders worth less than 50 euros to avoid polluting journeys for too small quantities. For products assembled abroad, we have relied on transport by train, which is more ecological than by plane or boat. The packaging of our products has also changed in recent years, moving from black boxes with large quantities of ink. and containing plastic bags to packaging now made of raw cardboard, with information written in black ink. Thanks to this new packaging method, we guarantee optimal recycling of the packaging of our products and a more positive impact on the environment. Almost all of the plastic films in our packaging have been removed and/or replaced by other recyclable solutions (cardboard or fabric).

We are also working to have products with less material and with optimized yields. As technology has evolved very quickly, we are able to produce LEDs that consume 4 times less than 5 years ago. For reference, at that time we produced luminaires producing 70 lumens per 1 watt whereas today we are capable of supplying luminaires producing up to 200 lumens per 1 watt.

Batinfo: What are the next projects for Clareo?

Olivier Maschino: To continue our dynamic performance and growth, we have many upcoming projects.

From an international development perspective, we have been honing in on the countries in which we are currently present. The French market being quite complicated and competitive, we are ready to expand further abroad. We did not want to confuse speed with haste and that is why we first solidified our knowledge and skills on the French market before tackling the international market.

Since our creation we have been oriented towards functional lighting. But since this year we have launched a whole range of designer lighting with more than 5000 references. This range was developed with our customers and constitutes a strong growth area in our eyes.

One of the very interesting sectors of the lighting market is Smart Lighting and Smart Building. So, we recently launched our solution SENSOR which was notably installed in our offices. It allows for serious savings in consumption. Switching to a Smart Lighting solution from a normal LED solution allows you to reduce your energy consumption by an average of 45%. In addition to these savings, Smart Lighting also allows for greater comfort, with luminous fluxes adapted to each person or depending on the outside light.