You are Élodie Faure, Strategy & Transformation Director at Lumière Cosmétique in Lyon. Six months after the board approved Lumière 2030, an award-winning sustainability strategy, eleven of its fourteen initiatives have not started. You have EUR 30 million and eighteen months; before you spend a euro, the board wants your diagnosis of why it stalled.
The situation
Lumière makes skincare and haircare products sold through retail, pharmacy and e-commerce across Europe: EUR 720 million of revenue, a 12% operating margin and 2,100 people. It is too large to be an artisanal brand and far smaller than the global groups it competes with. Lumière 2030 promises refillable packaging, certified sourcing, a 50% cut in Scope 1 and 2 emissions, and a shift of one-third of revenue to a certified "clean" line. Of its 14 initiatives, 11 have not started, 2 are stuck in pilot and 1, a marketing relaunch, went ahead of the supply chain meant to support it.
The deadlines are tight. A sustainability-linked loan steps up by 75 basis points (about EUR 2.1 million a year) if the 2027 milestones are missed. Two retail customers holding 22% of revenue have their own 2027 supplier requirements. And in the staff survey, 38% of employees call the strategy "greenwash slides". On 11 May a non-executive director asked what had actually changed.
What you have found in three months: plant and commercial managers are bonused only on cost and volume; no initiative has a single accountable owner; there are no eco-design engineers and no supplier-sustainability function; only 2 of the 38 packaging suppliers can deliver the planned mono-material packaging; and the fourteen initiatives were launched at once, with no order between them, competing for the same capital, factory time and attention. The CEO sponsored the strategy personally. The execution rate stands at 5%, against a target of 70%.