Its anniversary could have gone unnoticed, if France Bleu had not remembered that the patch celebrates its centenary this year. Without this French invention, how many tires would have ended up in a landfill instead of being repaired? This was what prompted Jean Rustin, an amateur cyclist and owner of a tire retreading shop in Batignolles, and Paul Doumenjou, a chemical engineer, to invent in 1921 something to plug a hole with a simple rubber washer that was glued to the tire. . Marketing began the following year in July 1922.
The invention of this cyclist who no longer wanted to die has revolutionized the lives of cyclists. In 1923, the newspaper the pedal praises this process that is quickly adopted by all the French. And for good reason, with a patch, repairs are simple, fast and cheap with a “made in France” product, as the brand’s slogan says. A kit is created consisting of rubber washers, a scraper, and a small tube of glue.
Today, this product is still produced in the same factory, in Crousilles in the town of La Chartre-sur-le-Loir in the Sarthe. Since then, the Rustin Company has expanded its business. Starting in the 1950s, the family business launched into the automotive, rail and then aeronautical sectors with all kinds of rubber products, especially gaskets. Among its clients, giants such as Alstom, Airbus or SNCF.
Thus, the production of patches is no longer at the heart of the company, even if it is the soul. If in a few years production has risen to more than 30 million units a month, now it only sells 300 kits a year, according to France Bleu. On the other hand, it is still run by a member of the Rustin family. Louis, the current CEO is in fact the great-grandson of Jean, the creator. Despite this decline in sales, the patch has entered the everyday life of the French by becoming a common name, like Frigidaire, Scotch, Caddy or the pressure cooker.
But unlike these brands, the patch has gone further by becoming synonymous with a trivial means to fix a major problem. The media and politicians like: “the hospital is not going to recover with patches” or “we have taken note of the law of purchasing power, but for us it is called patches.”
Source: BFM TV
