“The 5,000 euros my parents lent me became a little more than 1.4 billion euros.”
In 2003, Pierre-Edouard Stérin launched the “Smartbox”, inspired by a Belgian concept of gift boxes, which he took the license for with 5,000 euros that [lui] had loaned [s] “are parents.” “In 10 years, I took these 5,000 euros from 0 to 500 million euros in turnover, from 0 to 50 million euros in results per year, from 0 to more than 1,000 employees in around ten countries in Europe,” argues the businessman.
“The 5,000 euros that my parents lent me in 2003 became in 2026 a little more than 1.4 billion euros. I was not born a billionaire, I became one thanks to my ambition, my will, and my very significant capacity for work,” says Pierre-Edouard Stérin. “I have a completely typical life as a senior executive. With my wife and five children, we have to spend between 150 and 200,000 euros per year, which is a lot of money but which is very far from what the wealth I have accumulated could allow me to do,” he explains, indicating that he is not interested in “ the accumulation of material goods.”
From entrepreneurship to philanthropy
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In 2013, Pierre-Edouard Stérin resigned from his position as general manager of Smartbox: “I had reached the threshold of skills, I no longer had the level to manage this company,” he explains. For a dozen years, the billionaire has indicated that he has devoted himself to two activities: “Creating businesses. I launch around ten projects each year, and at the same time I invest the dividends from Smartbox, and from other companies that I have been able to develop, in different sectors,” he explains.
“I also decided to continue making money to do good. I created two entities, the first is the Common Good Fund, 4 -5 years ago, which supports projects of general interest, and the second project that I created, it is Périclès, which is a project metapolitical, which aims to disseminate conservative liberal ideas in France. »
“Politically, I would say I am center-right.”
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Pierre-Edouard Stérin also wanted to qualify the proximity that is attributed to him with the extreme right. “I am often caricatured by a certain press, but if I had to define myself politically, I would say that I am at the center of the right. I was an RPR activist in the 1980s,” he wanted to recall. “I much prefer business life to philanthropic and metapolitical affairs; today, I devote less than 10% of my time to it,” he assures.
