LE FAUTEUIL ROULANT FRANÇAIS

On January 4, 2018, Édouard Detrez set off at arm's length from Lectoure. With his body screwed on his French wheelchair, he reached Paris and the Elysée Palace -710 km! - in twenty-one days and seventeen steps. Through this journey, the young entrepreneur wanted to question public opinion and elected officials - up to the highest point of the state since he spoke for a few minutes with Emmanuel Macron - about the need to "buy French".

Édouard Detrez, born very prematurely, has cerebral palsy, which prevents him from walking normally. In 2015, disappointed not to find a chair that suits him, he founded his start-up to develop active and sporty wheelchairs, whose design and comfort are particularly careful: choice of colours, topstitching of fabrics... At 23 years old, the young man, surrounded by his parents and his brother in this entrepreneurial adventure, is betting above all on the made in France.

Today, his company mainly works with French suppliers: the seats and backrests of the chairs are designed in Séverac-le-Château in Aveyron, for example, and the bending and machining in Lannemezan in the Hautes-Pyrénées. A French manufacture that Édouard Detrez combines with short circuits for marketing as well. Three national medical brands already trust it and distribute its products.