Word: bergerac
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...rather surprising that Revlon's Bergerac has been so successful in sensing such subtle shifts in women's psychology and the subliminal instincts that shape it. A multinational manager who probably would do as well selling steel ingots or instant pancakes, Bergerac was trained in the exacting school run by flinty Harold Geneen, the creator...
Born in the French resort town of Biarritz, the son of a chief of the local gas and electric company, Bergerac studied economics and political science at the Sorbonne and Cambridge. He came to the U.S. at 21, earned an M.B.A. from U.C.L.A., and for one six-month period worked as a ranch hand roping horses in Oregon. He joined Cannon Electric Co. of Los Angeles as a salesman, and in three years worked up to international vice president. Meanwhile, he became a U.S. citizen and married Norma Langstaff, a Los Angeles abstract painter who has had several art shows...
Geneen was then building ITT into the world's biggest conglomerate; in Europe the firm's satellite companies sold life insurance and made food products, auto parts and construction materials, among many other things?including a few cosmetics. Bergerac helped negotiate about 100 acquisitions of companies for ITT. In 1971, at the age of 39, he was promoted to the job of running all ITT European operations from a base in Brussels. By encouraging still more acquisitions and spurring the companies' internal growth, he doubled European sales during the next three years to $5 billion. He was a prime candidate...
Revson knew the Bergerac name; Michel's older brother Jacques, a onetime movie actor and briefly the husband of Ginger Rogers, worked for Revlon (he heads its French operations). Michel and Revson had a meeting at the Palm
...restaurant in Manhattan, at which, another Revlon executive recalls, the clatter of dishes kept drowning out Revson's words, and Revson could scarcely fathom Bergerac's accent; neither understood much of what the other said. Bergerac remembers asking Revson at another meeting: "Why do you want somebody like me? I have been associated for a long time with basically technical products, so I know a fair amount about factories, marketing and technical engineering, but ..." Revson's reply: "I know all that, but you have one thing this company needs. You know how to make money...