Marie Cudennec, Goldfinger Factory
“COME BACK TO QUESTION ZERO”
“I remember a moment when I was about eight years old, looking over the harbour in Hong Kong and seeing a fridge floating in the ocean. It was such a harrowing moment,” says Marie Cudennec, co-founder of furniture design and education platform Goldfinger Factory. “It always stayed with me: humans are the problem but we could also be the solution.”
Marie co-founded Goldfinger Factory in 2013 to turn the tide on throwaway culture by rescuing sustainable materials and turning them into high-quality furniture and homewares. The London-based team also offers local residents facing financial hardship training and apprenticeships in sustainable woodworking. “We have a perfect split: four women and four men on the team, plus volunteers,” she says. “Coming from the luxury beauty industry where it was 90% women, 10% men, who are always the most senior, I was aware of not making it too female-led,” she says. “A diverse workforce is absolutely the way to go.”
The moment that Marie knew she had to go from employee to entrepreneur came after a performance review: “The feedback around my work was great but they had one issue with me, which was that I didn’t wear enough make-up,” she says. “It makes me laugh when I think about it now - no one would say that to a man.”
In everything Marie does, she always tries to come back to question zero, a concept introduced to her when she was invited to attend a summer course at Harvard Business School. “We can get so bogged down in the activities, the programmes, the numbers. Question zero is about asking yourself: What are you trying to achieve?” For Marie, the answer is sustainability, equality and community.