“At 86, I have every right to retire,” smiles Madame Lavergne. “Madame Lavergne” and not Yvette Lavergne, because no one, it seems, ever called her anything else. And the young retiree continues: “In the end, I had had a little enough, especially since my hip fracture in June. And then, everything became complicated in terms of management, with digital tools. »
Tired, perhaps? “No,” she exclaims. And yet, the one who just sold Libos Fleurs on December 2, has never measured her efforts or counted her working hours: “We have worked all our lives, from morning – 5 or 6 a.m. – to receive deliveries truckloads of flowers coming from Holland or the return from the Toulouse market, until the evening, 7:30 p.m.,” she whispers, without the slightest regret for these fourteen-hour days.
The bump of commerce
Her professional life began in 1956. At that time, with her husband Michel (who died six years ago), she set up a grocery store in Liboussou, in the town of Saint-Vite. A few years later, her husband, obviously born with a business background, bought the Novoprim store on the Libos square which, under his leadership, would become Primagic. Each at the head of a boutique, the couple is not idle.
In 1980, their son, Thierry, in turn joined Primagic to work with his parents, who had just abandoned the Saint-Vite grocery store. Decidedly insatiable, Michel Lavergne bought the Laloge garage adjoining the supermarket in 1984 and set up Libos Fleurs there, the business whose reputation goes far beyond the limits of the great Fumélois. Very quickly, customers came from everywhere to buy flowers, plants, seeds, funeral items and other drugstore products.
On Valentine’s Day, I loved seeing the line of husbands arrive around 6 p.m. They were easy to serve; we could sell them anything”
“My husband always wanted to sell what others weren’t selling. This is how he went one day to buy bee hives from a manufacturer in Mimizan,” the shopkeeper recalls. And if people came from far away, it was because the store was renowned for offering very attractive prices. “My husband wanted to have a lot of people and stretched the margins to make numbers. When the mayor criticized him for obstructing the passage, he retorted: ”A cluttered village is a village that is alive”. He also knew how to negotiate prices with producers,” she smiles.
“I get up later”
When asked about her memories, she recounts how the sacristan followed her husband to the Toulouse market to choose flowers for the church, and evokes her favorite holidays: Christmas, Mother’s Day, Grandmothers’ Day, ” which took well”, and especially Valentine’s Day. “I loved seeing the line of husbands arrive around 6 p.m. They were easy to serve; we could sell them anything,” she laughs.
In Libos, we are not about to forget the tutelary figure of the “Queen Mother”, seated behind her cash register, to whom the three saleswomen brought the small notes on which they had noted the purchases of each customer. A few days after her departure, Madame Lavergne still has work to do with all the papers to do, but admits: “I get up later”.
Harmonie Florale succeeds Libos Fleurs
Although the Lavergnes have stopped their activity, the boutique continues under the name Harmonie Florale. Harmonie Cros has in fact bought the business with her husband, Philippe. She thus returns to her first love, since she studied floristry and horticulture at the Fazanis agricultural high school, in Tonneins. She wants to continue in the same spirit, “if possible by developing floristry and outdoor plants,” she specifies.
Harmonie and Philippe Cros take over.
Michel Debiard
