Philippe Bloch This is Me

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1. 1. www.aaimhi.com

   www.aaimhi.com/members/icare/a - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/5/2002   Last Visited: 2/15/2004

   Philippe Bloch (ESSEC 1982), Co-President of Columbus Café, founded his firm in 1993, successfully introducing the gourmet coffee concept for the first time in France. Initially a flop, his partner and he learned that failure can also be the best business school. ?Location, location? turned out to be key. Trying is important he urged? ?winners never quit and losers never try?.
   
   Sharing his passion with delegates, Dominique-Charles Janssens, President of the Institut Van Gogh, showed how he turned a dream into reality: a vision of a renovated inn offering delicious food, whilst maintaining the upstairs bedroom which was rented to Vincent Van Gogh during his stay at Auvers.

2. 2. www.realir.net

   www.realir.net/search_tags/477 - [Cached]

   Published on: 8/30/2007   Last Visited: 3/16/2008

   French coffee shop entrepreneur Philippe Bloch is another with concerns.
   ...
   It's a symbolic change, but an important one, says French entrepreneur Philippe Bloch. Founder of Columbus Café (billed, by him, as the French answer to Starbucks), Bloch says: "You can start a company more easily than used to be the case. But it's still a nightmare actually running one."
   
   The rules have also been changed to help entrepreneurs when things go bad. "If a business went down before," Bloch explains, "the staff would be entitled to social security payments straight away, but the risk taker would not. That has now changed."
   
   Another change in France is the requirement from bankers that entrepreneurs must put up any property as a guarantee. This has been dropped. "In France, entrepreneurs are always the ,bad guys'," says Bloch.
   ...
   But, worthy as this is, it will take a massive sea-change in its "exasperating" labour laws to kick-start French youth to start up their own businesses, says Bloch. "Every time you employ a person in France you have to call in an HR specialist to ensure you do everything correctly," he moans.

3. 3. www.eali.org

   www.eali.org/print.php?type=ar - [Cached]

   Published on: 2/5/2007   Last Visited: 12/2/2007

   Says Philippe Bloch, co-founder and former chief of Columbus Café, a chain of espresso bars in and around Paris: "You have to be crazy to be an entrepreneur in France."
   ...
   A couple of years ago, Columbus Café founder Bloch ran afoul of the Inspection du Travail and found himself in criminal court. An inspector had noticed that one of Bloch's managers had worked 10 hours longer than the state-mandated 35 per week. The fact that she was filling in for no-shows didn't matter. Bloch, now 47, was found guilty of "obstructing the duties of an inspector" and slapped with a suspended fine of 2,000 euros (just over $2,500 at today's exchange rate). "I was sitting between two guys, one charged with killing three people, and [one] charged with raping his secretary in the parking lot," he recalls.