Founded in 1946 in Bonneuil-les-Eaux in the Oise department by Emile Cornilleau, the company started out as a joinery and woodworking workshop.
In the post-war period, many of the region’s buildings needed to be rebuilt, and Cornilleau prospered mainly by manufacturing and installing doors and windows. But it didn’t stop there... When harsh winters brought building work to a temporary standstill, the company was already looking for ways to diversify, and used its production facilities for other industries, for example by producing bottle holders and wooden crates for the automobile industry, for the storage of parts.
As society evolved, needs began to change, and leisure activities became an increasingly important part of French people’s lives. Business tapered off slightly for Cornilleau in the second half of the 1960s, but in 1969, a decisive encounter was set to change the course of the company’s history. Building on its success, the BHV department store in Paris was looking to expand its offer, and indirectly entrusted Cornilleau with a new project - manufacturing table tennis tables. Boosted by this exciting new mission, the family business stepped up its game and set about acquiring the expertise it needed. The result was 3 prototype tables.
BHV Paris was won over, and ordered 300 of them for the Christmas season.
They placed their order in May. Emile Cornilleau faced a true challenge: his family workshop had to expand to an industrial scale capable of producing large volumes in short deadlines. His son, Pierre, convinced him to aim high, and Emile Cornilleau invested all his savings in facilities geared to that one product - the challenge was on. That decision marked a turning point in Cornilleau’s history, the founding event of the future table tennis brand.
Housing trends were changing, private homes were springing up on the outskirts of big cities,
but gardens remained fairly small. As a solution to people’s desire to play table tennis and still be able to use their garden space, Pierre Cornilleau pulled off another stroke of genius in 1995. He designed the compact table: a table that hardly takes up any room when folded up. Years later, this innovation became standard, not least because it significantly improved the safety and comfort-of-use of table tennis tables.
