Yves Rocher, president and founder of the Yves Rocher Group, died in Paris Dec. 26, 2009, at the age of 79, as a result of a "sudden vascular brain accident."
Born in 1930 at La Gacilly (in the "Morbihan", Brittany, France), Rocher was involved in running his family's textile business from an early age. In 1958, he installed the first production site for the Yves Rocher company in the attic of his family home. To distribute his first cosmetic creation, a cream based on "ficaire," he imagined an ingenious distribution system and became, according to a company statement, the French pioneer of selling mail order cosmetics. Not willing to depend exclusively on the postal service and in order to satisfy his growing number of clients, he opened Boulevard Haussmann in Paris in 1969, the first Yves Rocher store.
The company remains in control of the Rocher family (with 75% control), and Yves' grandson Bris, 31, will now become the group president.
