It is simple: we love number 5.
InnoVentum was established on the 5th of May 2010 (5.5.2010) and this date would have appealed to Mademoiselle Chanel a great deal: she considered number 5 to be her lucky number.
Deep roots of this particular preference are well explained in the book by Mazzeo “The Secret of Chanel No. 5” (2010).
At the age of twelve, Chanel was handed over to the care of nuns, and for the next six years spent a stark, disciplined existence in a convent orphanage, Aubazine, founded in the twelfth century. From her earliest days at Aubazine, the number 5 had potent associations for Chanel. Aubazine had been founded by Cistercians: a Catholic order who placed great emphasis on numerology. The number 5 was especially esteemed as signifying the pure embodiment of a thing, its spirit, its mystic meaning. The paths that led Chanel to the cathedral for daily prayer were laid out in circular patterns repeating the number 5.
Her affinity for the number 5 co-mingled with the abbey gardens, and by extension the lush surrounding hillsides abounding with cistus, a five-petal rose. It is noteworthy that the Cistercians, an ancient monastic order of Catholicism, derived the name of their order from this very flower.
In 1920, when presented with small glass vials of scent numbered 1-5 and 20-24, for her assessment, she chose the sample composition contained in the fifth vial. Chanel told her master perfumer, Ernest Beaux, whom she had commissioned to develop a fragrance with modern innovations:
“I present my dress collections on the fifth of May, the fifth month of the year and so we will let this sample number five keep the name it has already, it will bring good luck.”
It did bring plenty of good luck: the French government reports that a bottle of Chanel No. 5 is sold every 30 seconds and generates sales equivalent to $100 million a year.
We hope that such numeric harmony of the company creation date will bring a lot of good luck to InnoVentum as well! We already look forward to the day when our wind turbine solutions will be sold every 30 seconds and have the ambition to achieve this in less than 90 years!
05.05.2012
InnoVentum AB © 2012
