The brand, which evokes nostalgia and pride, hit its €5m fundraising target within hours and orders have soared
rop a Duralex glass and it will most likely bounce, not break. The French company itself has tumbled several times in the past two decades and always bounced back, but never quite as spectacularly as when, earlier this month, it asked the public for money.
An appeal for €5m (£4.4m) of emergency funding to secure the immediate future of the glassworks took just five hours and 40 minutes to reach its target. Within 48 hours, the total amount pledged had topped €19m.
François Marciano, 59, the director general of Duralex, said the response had astonished everyone at the company. “We thought it would take five or six weeks to raise the €5m. When it reached nearly €20m we had to say stop. Enough,” he said.
As a staff cooperative, €5m is the maximum Duralex can accept in public investment under financial rules.
