As the company celebrates its 50th anniversary, Nascer Tazi looks back at the challenges facing the group, which also plans to launch a foundation dedicated to culture.

Since its creation, this family empire has known the involvement of 3 generations of the Tazi family because for its founder, "it was unthinkable that his children could do anything other than work there".

Of this group, the general public strangely retains only the name of the president of the international pole, Karim Tazi, whom the press does not hesitate to nickname "the red boss" for his political outings.

Only insiders know Abdelaziz Tazi, historical founder and CEO of this true success story and his other son Nascer who is president of the industrial pole and especially the key man of the group.

This former student in the United States is the fruit of his field experience which started in 1984 his career in a small structure of mattress manufacturing at the bottom of the ladder. He worked in production and sales before managing the group's activities in a transversal manner.

Returning to the genesis of the group, he recalls that his father started his industrial adventure with very little financial means and that he was very involved in the ranks of the communist party.

Today, the Richbond group's activity is 25% Moroccan living room, 25% bedding, 25% plastic industry, 25% food industry and soon real estate and hotels-apartments for business tourists.

• Inventor of the Tazi brush

For the anecdote, few people know that this group created the small round hairbrush that has become a cult object in the daily life of Moroccans. Like the creator of the Kalashnikov machine gun, the founder of Richbond did not consider it necessary to patent his invention which was plagiarized all over the world.

Since then, the company has structured itself and has become aware of the material value of immaterial ideas by systematically registering all its patents.

Due to its size, Richbond is the market leader with the Dolidol group which has just celebrated its 40th anniversary. Between the two of them, they account for 50 to 55% of the market share and the rest is occupied by about twenty competitors.

• Slower growth in recent years

The division of the group into 2 major industrial and international poles stems from the fact that if its historical vocation remains centered on Morocco, the usefulness of a structure piloting the international development and real estate by his brother Karim was felt to relaunch the activity all azimuths.

For 40 years, growth rates were between 6 and 10% per year, but since the global crisis, the group has achieved a growth of 2% because "the European locomotive has stopped at the station".

With very little debt (2 to 3%), it does not plan to go public because it does not need to raise funds to finance its growth.

Richbond is therefore banking on an external structure to boost its external growth, which currently represents 5% of the group's global activity in terms of exports. Without forgetting Europe, the group is turning towards Africa to take positions in these emerging markets.

Changes in consumer habits are analyzed to anticipate an appropriate offer. Thus, Richbond is betting on the mutation of the blanket market to that of the comforter, which should take another 15 years before becoming part of Moroccan customs.

The company has also adapted an offer of Moroccan living rooms that have gone from 10 meters of seating length to only 6 meters because of the shrinking of Moroccan homes.

• 1.5 MMDH of turnover

The company achieves a turnover of 1.5 billion dirhams per year, 40% of which is made with the upper economic strata. The profit margin is between 2 and 3% despite the appearance of unfair competition from informal structures that destabilize the market by pulling prices down.

This is a problem that is difficult to manage because these competitors have 30% less social charges, not to mention a workforce paid 400 DH/week for 12 hours of work/day.

In the midst of a dynamic investment process, Richbond has been waiting for two years for authorizations to build a 25-hectare site dedicated to bedding and a plastic manufacturing site covering 8 hectares.

Nascer Tazi laments the bureaucratic system that curbs the desire for investment and goes so far as to call for the creation of a ministry to expedite the issuance of administrative permits.

He does not understand having to wait so long while his group plans to invest over the next 6 years, not less than one billion DH on equity and bank loans.

He says he is optimistic, however, hoping that his group will become a major African player that is not just a manufacturer but an identifiable brand like the cosmetics group L'Oreal.

To conclude, he reveals that the 50th anniversary of the family group is an opportunity to open in a few months the doors of a foundation called "Abdelaziz and Touria Tazi" where culture will be honored on 3,000 square meters for young people passionate about music, photography and comics.