DESJOYAUX
Un succès familial et mondial de la piscine pour tous

“Les piscines Desjoyaux is an old story,” says Jean-Louis Desjoyaux, the current CEO. It’s a story of family and entrepreneurship, combining values, innovation and daring.
” It all began in the post-war years. Like his father, my grandfather on my mother’s side, Jean Basson, began working in the mines. He soon realized he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to become a tile maker, and quickly set up his own business. The adventure continued in the early 50s: “My mother, Jeannine Basson, met my father Jean Des Joyaux, then the son of a baker in Cuzieu, on the banks of the Coise during the vacations.”
The latter came to Saint-Etienne to work as a carre leur with his father-in-law.

The first swimming pool built in Cuzieu

The company grew to around fifty employees in the early 60s. In 1966, Jean Desjoyaux built his first swimming pool at the family home in Cuzieu, Loire: “At the time, there was no filtration system. It worked on the principle of Roman baths. Everything had yet to be invented, and that would take time.
In 1968, Jean Desjoyaux set up his own tiling and masonry business, which his son Jean-Louis joined at the age of 17 in 1971. The company prospered with these activities, notably on behalf of Casino and Auchan, while at the same time branching out into swimming pools. “Friends asked for one. The following year, we built five, then ten, twenty, fifty a year in the Loire, Rhône and Haute-Loire regions. But it was the building itself that enabled us to finance the rest.”
The company set out to industrialize pool manufacturing, experimenting with polyester, reinforced concrete, shotcrete, polyester with reinforced concrete ties…
Forez piscine was created in 1974.

Polypropylene: the genius idea that will change everything

The Desjoyaux revolution began in the winter of 1976: “My mother gave the kids a sled for Christmas. Those red sleds you can find everywhere.
When my father asked for the price, he wondered how they could charge so much.” Jean Desjoyaux discovered that the sleds were made of polypropylene. The idea was born.
Desjoyaux developed swimming pools with polypropylene panels reinforced with reinforced concrete to provide a ten-year guarantee: “We registered a patent for these panels in 1978 and another for the filtration unit in 1983.”
The democratization of the swimming pool was underway. With its attractive prices, Desjoyaux set out to conquer France, creating a French network in 1984, before expanding internationally in 1988. Jean Louis, who took over the reins of the company in 1987, stepped up the pace in 1990: “We pulled out all the stops and built our headquarters in La Fouillouse. An investment of 50 million francs to manufacture in the Loire. In 1991, we decided to go public for the sake of our reputation and as a precaution. This enabled us to increase our capital.