With its fifty employees and its 70 years of existence, Ets Gatignol, wood construction, are respected in the region and in their professional environment. This Saturday, September 21, there will be a big party to celebrate this anniversary.
It will take a big cake to support the 70 candles that the Gatignol company in Saint-Angel is preparing to blow out to celebrate its anniversary.
The small party is planned for Saturday, September 21. Several local personalities will undoubtedly come to drop by and even a little more, a sign of the esteem and importance that the Gatignol company is recognized for.
“But we’re not going to celebrate or commemorate it, I hope we’re really going to celebrate it,” smiles Gilbert Pacheco. “We’ll celebrate it with all the employees but also the partners and children… a few partners and suppliers, there, here, under the big hangar.”
The house spirit
An illustration of the house spirit that the company manager is trying to perpetuate despite the spirit of the present times. Its longevity, the number of employees, around fifty, and, the cherry on the famous cake, its good economic health. For the first time in its history, the Gatignol company has exceeded 10 million in turnover for the 2023 financial year.
“We should be able to do the same thing in 2024″ hopes Gilbert Pacheco, we are on a good pace of progress.”
Gatignol, therefore, is no longer, as we still sometimes hear, “the guy who makes wooden houses”. Since the 90s, the company has diversified and today produces many solid wood structures: industrial buildings, agricultural buildings (storage sheds, stables, etc.), individual houses and collective housing.
All skills in-house
These three productions are more or less balanced: “Ultimately, the individual timber-framed house only represents 20% of our activity, we make 8 or 9 houses per year. 40% is done on agricultural buildings, and 30% on industrial buildings”… and with wood from the Limousin forest: spruce, fir and Douglas fir mainly. Problems with suppliers, transport, price fluctuations… Michel Gatignol, the former boss, had a good nose: “In 1991, he created a sawmill within the company which became Gatignol’s supplier and today, it is still a real asset for the company”. In any case for structural and joinery timber. For glued laminated timber, Gatignol trusts a supplier from Creuse. Carpenters, roofers, zinc workers, joiners, metal locksmiths, wood operators, structural engineers, designers… Gatignol can boast of having all the skills in-house. “And as a general rule we train two or three apprentices each year”. “The wealth of a company is its employees, it is the man, it is they who leave an image of the company, it is they who solve the problems”, concludes Gilbert Pacheco.
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“At Gatignol we have kept the name and the house spirit.” If a man was needed to take over from Michel Gatignol, Gilbert Pacheco symbolises a sort of obviousness.
The transfer of power took place in 2014 and it is as if destiny had long planned him to fulfil this mission at the head of the company.
Gilbert Pacheco was first an engineering student at Arts et Métiers in Limoges. To complete his studies, he chose the apprenticeship route and “landed” at Gatignol in Saint-Angel. He was then 22 years old.Gilbert Pacheco: site manager, engineer, business manager… A career that naturally led him to take over the company.?Ph: AB
“I first worked as an engineer in the design office, then I became a site manager, then a business manager.”
In 2014, when Michel Gatignol’s departure was on the agenda, Gilbert Pacheco bought the company: “I was shaped by the house spirit and as this spirit was close to my values and my expectations…”. Gilbert Pacheco always honors a promise: “Michel Gatignol asked me, in homage to his father, the founder, if I would keep the name Gatignol.”
The name has remained of course. But thanks to the foresight of Michel Gatignol and now for 10 years of Gilbert Pacheco, the company has grown but above all, has diversified.
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