DAPY: More Than Ever, the Specialist in Made-to-Measure

DAPY, a French family-owned company founded in 1980 that specializes in the design, development, and production of bespoke items for luxury brands, has used the past two years to strengthen its development and prototyping capabilities in France with the creation of a new workshop in Puteaux dedicated to mockups, prototypes, and small production runs. At the same time, its executives have made a major investment in a new facility in Vietnam dedicated to folding and rigid cardboard packaging. This new facility bolsters the company’s manufacturing capabilities in this category while providing greater flexibility in terms of volume, lead times, and production organization. We spoke with Pierre-Yves Azuelos, CEO.

For over forty years, the French firm has been producing fully custom-made items, ranging from covers and secondary packaging to gift boxes, gift items, merchandising materials, displays, accessories, and products incorporating mechanisms, lighting, or electronics. “We support our clients throughout the entire project development process,” explains Pierre-Yves Azuelos, “from design and technical analysis through prototyping, production, quality control, and delivery. What sets us apart is our expertise in a very wide range of materials and processes: cardboard, acrylic, plastic injection molding, metal, wood, textiles, ceramics, electronics, and more. The new workshop in Puteaux allows us to significantly shorten the time between an idea and its realization. For bespoke items, this step is essential: we need to be able to quickly test a shape, a material, a mechanism, or a finish before moving on to mass production.
It also enables us to produce certain small batches and customizations right next to our Paris-based teams and our clients.”
The French firm now has more than thirty employees (excluding factory staff) and maintains an international presence with teams in Paris, New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tainan, Perth, Edinburgh, and London. “This structure allows us to stay close to both our clients and our industrial network,” emphasizes Pierre-Yves Azuelos. “Our model is based on several specialized manufacturing sites, selected according to the materials, technologies, and expertise required for each project. This allows us to offer great flexibility, from prototypes or small production runs to larger-scale international production.”

Taking on Every Challenge

It is worth noting that a significant portion of the firm’s business is conducted internationally, primarily in Europe (over 50%), North America (over 30%), and Asia. Because it does not operate based on a catalog, the firm says it takes on every challenge. “As I told you, our business is to design and produce bespoke items, developed specifically for a brand, an experience, or a particular use. We start with a creative vision or a client’s need, then we seek the best way to bring it to life through industrial production.”

This can take the form of secondary packaging (folding packs, gift boxes, rigid boxes, display cases, or multi-material solutions), as well as displays and merchandising elements, product highlighters, service items, caps and lids, or even VIP gifting projects designed as genuine objects that the end customer can keep.

Creating the Most Relevant Object!

Mock-ups are also one of the French firm’s most recognized areas of historical expertise. “We have developed cutting-edge expertise in this field, emphasizes Pierre-Yves Azuelos, particularly in complex reproductions, large formats, demanding finishes, and the faithful reproduction of brand codes. We also focus heavily on brand rituals: serving accessories, tableware, ice buckets, trays, barware, and event-specific items that extend the brand experience beyond its core product. We therefore do not seek to sell a specific technology or material, but rather to create the object that best meets the client’s brief, striking the right balance between creativity, user experience, industrial feasibility, quality, cost, and environmental impact.”

Integrating Sustainability from the Design Phase Onward

As for rapidly evolving regulatory and environmental pressures, Dapy’s leaders explain that they have fully integrated these into their product development. “But we believe that sustainability shouldn’t be reduced to a simple matter of compliance or the pursuit of an environmental claim,” emphasizes Pierre-Yves Azuelos. “Our first question is always: What is the goal we’re really trying to achieve? Reducing the amount of material, the weight transported, or the carbon footprint? Facilitating recycling? Or designing an object durable and desirable enough to be kept and reused for several years? Depending on the goal, the right solution will vary.”
This focus on sustainability has actually been part of the French firm’s DNA since the early 1990s, when a rigid acrylic box was developed for Dior—conceived as a reusable and durable object rather than as packaging intended to be thrown away. And many Dior employees have kept the box on their desks as a decorative and storage item!
“Today, we incorporate this approach right from the design phase,” explains Pierre-Yves Azuelos: “reducing or simplifying components, using recycled or bio-based materials where appropriate, giving products a second life, ensuring multi-material or electronic products can be disassembled, implementing refillable systems, and optimizing packaging and transportation. We believe that there is no such thing as a ‘sustainable’ material or solution in the absolute sense. We must look at the object’s entire life cycle and, on a project-by-project basis, seek the solution that truly makes the most sense—rather than one that simply allows us to check a box.”