Who is Thibault Lamarque?

Thibaut set up Castalie thirteen years ago after an experience at Veolia Environnement and a position as financial director at Alter Eco.

Why Castalie and the water sector?

After his studies at Dauphine, Thibault did a final thesis on access to water, with which he was recruited by Veolia. During his six years at Veolia in M&A and Internal Audit, he spent three years working in internal audit.

During this experience, he carried out post-acquisition audits of the company, which gave him the opportunity to visit a lot of sites. He was then able to see that the subject of plastic was not addressed fifteen years ago, it is still not addressed today.

In seaside landfills, when the organic waste has rotted and there is nothing left, what is left? The plastic. As an entrepreneur, Thibault asked himself how he could act in this sector.

It was when he discovered Sodastream that he questioned how to apply this concept to markets other than B2C.

At first, Castalie was therefore a vision of opportunities, but now, after all these years, what is Castalie?

The idea was to say that it was possible to filter tap water and serve it to the consumer still or sparkling in pretty bottles, thus replacing the plastic bottle.

To do this, Thibault developed, with design offices, a high-performance fountain. He then looked at which market he could target this product to. Among the targeted markets, two quickly took hold: the restaurant market and the hotel market.

It was the beginning of bistronomy and home cooking and Castalie accompanied this movement.

From the moment they got guarantees from top chefs, the relationship with others changed. In 2015, they received a phone call from the director of general services at LVMH to order several fountains.

What are the obstacles encountered by Castalie?

Coming to an oligopolistic market, where large groups rule.

After a few weeks after the creation of Castalie, Thibault had to deal with the bailiffs.

But finally, after consulting his lawyers, he understood that there were no risks. The procedure lasted several years but it ended well for Castalie.

At the time the company was called Eau de Castalie. It is now called Eau Castalie. They got the right to call water pure and to say that it is more sustainable than bottled water.

How is the pure water market evolving?

In France, there are three producers of drinking water. Of this drinking water production, only 1% is used for drinking, which represents one French person out of two.

On bottled water, we are talking about 16 billion single-use bottles.

Castalie therefore inspired the market by eliminating transport between the source and the place of consumption and by eliminating the single-use container.

What is Castalie in 2023?

A few weeks ago, there was a massive fraud by one of the water producers. This shows that even for mineral water, it is difficult to maintain the quality. We often talk about organic but why do we do organic?

For pesticides, of course, but also to preserve soils and groundwater. In this situation, we see that even in mineral waters there are pesticides, PFAS, fecal bacteria. This water is impure.

The owner of the spring therefore had to micro filter his water, which is forbidden for mineral water, since it is supposed to be pure at the origin.

This is causing an upheaval in the water sector and will have a significant impact on the bottled water market.

One can imagine that there will be tensions between mineralmakers and dowsers who respect and those who do not respect.

Also, the director of a large group announced that there would now be mineral water, and microfiltered water. It's the harbinger of big changes.

Castalie intends to enter the game with the same leitmotif as always: no transport, no waste.

What will happen to Castalie in the years to come?

Castalie wants to become the favorite of Europeans, this means France where they want to continue to expand their Premium offer.

They have a lot of requests, so they will continue their momentum and undoubtedly develop other offers in other sectors.

Also, they want to register internationally, because there is currently no equivalent offer.

And settling in private homes. They therefore want to deal with all incoming requests, because in view of the deterioration of water quality, having advanced filtration at home with an accessible product is interesting to develop.

The market is deforming, in this situation how does Castalie, who is not a major industrialist, do it?

They always knew how to find the right contacts, for example, even before having his first collaborators, Thibault called on experts in fields that could be useful to him. It does the same thing with its Board members.

Having succeeded in bringing skills together around him was very important. The Seb Group acquired a stake in Castalie in 2020, in all Thibault brought in four investors whom he selected. Even without a lot of resources, it's important to do things smartly. With his teams, he likes to talk about “Peasant Common Sense”.

Knowing how to be resilient and frugal allows you to do things with more attention and finesse.

The teams have grown, the organization has evolved, Thibault has been able to build a solid team, can he say more?

Thibault had the chance to do what he describes as a very nice meeting with Kévin Rancic, the current CEO of Castalie. This encounter took place during her internship at Castalie.

Following this one, Kévin also decided to do his alternation at Castalie. He then had a first permanent contract as a salesman and then became sales manager, sales director and finally General Manager.

He has now been Thibault's partner for several years. The latter describes this as a “beautiful encounter in professional life”, an important encounter that now allows him to do other things.

The Castalie team was built over several years. Thibault made mistakes, he sometimes recruited too quickly, with an affect, without taking serious references and other times by taking references, but that did not prevent him from making mistakes, because everything related to humans is complicated to understand.

Focus on Castalie's economic model:

Thibault invested all his savings in Castalie. And he has been constantly looking for new resources for a long time.

An additional customer costs several thousand euros with the installation of the Castalie fountain, the fountain itself and the bottles.

They are building a park and recurring, but it is necessary to be able to finance this start of installation at the customer.

Over time, Castalie has been able to access more financial products, so it is easier to finance a new customer than it was at the beginning.

The recurrence of its customers represents a form of tranquility and real comfort. But to achieve this, we had to convince, research and go through difficult times.

The coach's advice

• The importance of resilience and tenacity;
• Visualization: with Thibault's ability to find a “market hole”, this visualization is remarkable;
• Collective interest: Thibault was able to build a team thanks to his love of his mission, this is what keeps collaborators going. They are part of something that works for the common good.