Feet in the mud, we snatch Antoine Fesson, bundled up in his down jacket, at his construction site for the day. On this damp and icy morning, under the bare oaks of the Orleans forest, the young man supervises the construction of a “tiny house” – a cabin-style house – in pine.
Holy life change. A few months ago, Antoine Fesson lived in Asnières, in the Paris region. Until then, he had followed the path of good students: preparatory class, business school in Rouen, then a rising career at PwC, one of the Big Four in the auditing world. And then, like so many other young graduates of his generation, this trail and photo enthusiast was overtaken, at the age of 30, by a “crisis of meaning”.
After a three-month sabbatical with his partner Samantha Bailly, author of novels and screenwriter of video games, the young couple decides, in the midst of a pandemic, to embark on a risky project: build and rent cabins in the woods. Finally, more precisely, “designer tiny houses” with bay windows opening onto the forest, eco-friendly soaps, Adirondack armchairs on the terrace and breakfast baskets that are left in the morning in front of the door.
Five hectares in the forest
Everything happened really fast. Armed with a business plan, Antoine Fesson contacts, at the end of 2020, about fifteen communities and tourist offices in “less than two hours from Paris”, looking for forest land to buy or rent. Nothing is happening…
Until this message from the tourist office of Grand Pithiverais, in the Loiret. Next to Chambon-la-Forêt, a village known to label readers for being one of the sources of the Cristalline brand, there is this campsite in the middle of the forest, abandoned for three years. Disreputable, the place has become the scene of wild fires, there is sometimes an underworld agitation. The project came at a perfect time for the owner, who, in February 2021, sold the five-hectare land to the Parisians. “We got our loan easily, remembers Samantha Bailly. The banker told us that he liked our file: the fact that Antoine worked at Price, that I write novels, that made a good story. »
In a few weeks, the young couple replanted trees, evacuated 33 tons of waste, led an online participatory fundraising campaign (44,000 euros collected), and had eight spruce cabins built. Finished the Rive du Bois campsite, welcome to Parenthèse. In July 2021, the first customers arrived… Two weeks later, all summer weekends were full.
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