Maurice Luiset (1871 – 1942) was a French

financier An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital the investor usually purchases some species of property. Types of in ...

and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

who created several mainstream consumer-good products such as Mir (detergent), the world's oldest existing, and continental Europe's first detergent, the perfume Porte-Bonheur and a hygiene and beauty product La Mondiale. Maurice Luiset also owned one of the largest candle manufacturing businesses in France, a bee-keeping products business that sold under the brand name La Colombe and merchant ships that he used for import and export activities. He based his business operations out of Vienne, near Lyon, France.

Overview

Maurice Luiset is best known for having created the first non-bleach detergent, MIR, an innovation that gave rebirth to the waning textile industry of the

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

area as it improved operating efficiencies in the washing of silks and fine textiles. The detergent (which was sold to Cotelle & Fouchet in 1923 and is currently a portfolio product of Henkel Group) remains one of the most a popular detergents in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

and is one of the most recognizable brand names in

, with 99% recognition rate amongst the French female adult population. Maurice Luiset first founded a candle manufacturing business, Ets. Luiset in Sainte-Colombe-les-Vienne. He was successful and branched out into a myriad of activities including consumer goods, industrial products related to bee-keeping, import and export shipping, and financing activities of various types including stock market and sovereign debt speculation. Shortly before the Russian revolution of 1917, Maurice Luiset invested a significant amount of his wealth in

Czar Nicholas II Nicholas II (Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov; 186817 July 1918) or Nikolai II was the last reigning Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland from 1 November 1894 until his abdication on 15 March 1917. He married ...

's regime bonds, which had lost the majority of their value, speculating that the Revolution would fail and the bonds' value would rally; as the future communist nation fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks so too did his investments. He focused his later year efforts on innovations in the detergent, perfume and other chemical products and on the study of bee-keeping and the effect of bee pollination on tree varieties. Maurice Luiset died of pancreatic cancer in 1942, at the age of 70.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Luiset, Maurice 1871 births 1935 deaths French financiers 20th-century French businesspeople French cosmetics businesspeople