Sweet success

The trade buying season for Christmas books is at its hottest in July.  That’s when publishers need to have samples ready to convince trade-buyers that their products will fill stockings.  Romain Pages (www.romain-pages.com) had a mouth-watering new book of chocolate recipes, written by the firm’s talented chocolatier and finance director Anne Deblois. They had wanted to sell the book pre-packaged with a mould to produce chocolate bars but by the end of May had still not found anyone who could make the mould in the time or quantity needed.

As CEO and editor Jean-Pierre Duval explains:  “Romain Pages had not worked with plastic before, so we really needed a reliable sub-contractor.”  He got the break he needed in early June, when he came across two websites: one for Protomold, the rapid injection moulding service of Proto Labs and the other, Forum International de Plasturgie (FIP), a trade show in Lyon that month.  Within 24 hours of emailing Protomold, Jean-Pierre received a call from Bernard Faure, Protomold’s Technical Sales Manager in France, who outlined the possibilities of rapid injection moulding and arranged a meeting at the FIP show just 10 days later.