At 23, he faced a turning point. Continue on this path or seek something else. Spending his life in workshops working on technologies, new shapes, and new ideas was great, but it barely paid the bills due to the decline of windsurfing. Patrice eventually quit everything to finally take his high school diploma as an independent candidate. Working as a nightclub bouncer to surf during the day, his physique and high level in boxing helped him survive fights with minimal damage. He emerged from this period with a darker view of humanity and an ability to push to the end of tensions without backing down, which proved useful later in China, for example.
He obtained the diploma with 10.02 points without really sleeping for a week! Working at the club from 10 pm to 6 am, and exams starting at 8 am. Not very glorious, but it was a wake-up call. He moved on to sports science to simplify things. A workaholic, he attended the first year of medicine, the DEUG in sociology, and psychology to take the courses that interested him. Always at the top of the class, he achieved record scores. Then he pursued a bachelor's degree in sports management and a postgraduate diploma in management at CNAM in parallel in the evening. His goal was to catch up on lost time by acquiring the tools he would need in his professional life from each discipline. When you work nights, you know what you come to school for during the day! And it's not just diplomas, but actual skills to give yourself a chance.
Holywind then asked him for help to boost the shop after the Erika oil spill. With Alain Clémenti, they improved the shop's performance. A few months later, Patrice met his future wife at Holywind, who lived in Corsica, and everything accelerated. Xavier Rolland, a former Holywind salesman and Bic Sport sales rep, informed him of a job in Marseille at H2O, the company managing the 80 stores of the Magic Surf and Subchandlers networks in Europe. Patrice was hired as an assistant, earned an MBA, and in three years took over as the Group's Director alongside Thierry Dumon, CEO of the H2O Group.
They redeveloped GONG in 2003, owned by Magic Surf, as one of the fifteen proprietary brands of the group. It was a flamboyant era, one of audacity and excess. Multiple trips to the USA, Hawaii, to factories, everything was possible due to the substantial resources available. The week at headquarters in Marseille, weekends in Corsica, it was an electrifying period that opened the doors to projects of a different scale than what Patrice had previously experienced. A son of workers and grandson of farmers, entering this world of opulence was a shock.
Everything was possible. Investing, inventing, overturning, the directive was to take control of the market. A vast subject, a bit megalomaniacal, but it shook up the major market balances to build two beautiful store networks. Patrice had been in retail since his early teens. He gave them everything he could to turn these two store networks into heavyweights in the global surfing market.
However, the 2008 crisis put an end to it all. Finances were bad despite multiple recovery plans. The behaviors of some team members were exposed; it was disillusionment and the end of a dream. Shareholders grew tired and decided to end the story. 90 layoffs to manage, including his and those of his closest collaborators: a truly unpleasant period that marked the end of a twenty-year relationship with the stores.
Before leaving, he bought back GONG before leaving Marseille for Corsica. To isolate himself, the island, to start over. The dismantling of the H2O Group exposed the worst sharks: theft of our molds, plundering of the image, identity theft to recover productions... GONG was not spared the worst. It must be said that the brand had polarized by creating envy and hatred. This misstep fueled forums and beach discussions, spreading the worst lies for years.
But from Corsica, Patrice rebuilt his empire stone by stone. First, by opening his workshop in the Bastia hill, facing Elbe in the blue. Alone but with his friends around Jean Valère Bordenave, he restarted a small production of very advanced SUP prototypes. These were the first ShortSUPs under 6', then under 5'. Ideas flourished in this lifesaving isolation for the reconstruction of GONG. With the brand image suffering, it was the ideal time to show the true foundations of GONG: the passion for shaping and surfing.
A small series production returned in 2010. Sales accelerated significantly in 2011: the series stock was moved to La Baule with the hiring of David. Then Fred and the others followed. It took four years to recover from the 2008 drop.
In 2016, Patrice definitively returned to La Baule. No more Corsica and its almost total freedom, but GONG had become so big that the boss needed to be there full time. The acceleration continued to reach the current situation: a great company that satisfies thousands of customers worldwide.
Always focused on shapes and products, Patrice found an exciting business at the scale of H2O, and its potential is still ten times greater. Creating products, jobs, a team, desires, passions, intense moments of joy, life in the ocean, sharing on a large scale, this is Patrice’s daily life nowadays.