Internet Site Launch

Compagnie de Saint-Gobain
6 February 2001


                         LAPEYRE LAUNCHES ITS E-COMMERCE SITE

LAPEYRE, a subsidiary of the Saint-Gobain Group, has launched www.lapeyre.fr,
the first e-commerce site in the world where the general public may purchase
durable interior fittings for the home.

Convinced of the strategic challenge offered by e-commerce, the new and
imperative aspect of distribution, LAPEYRE invested a total of 1.4 million euros
(9 million francs) in 2000 in the design and production of its new internet site
and plans to dedicate a further 2.4 million euros (16 million francs) to its
development in 2001.

The www.lapeyre.fr site focuses very closely on the client and the initiative
lies within the framework of LAPEYRE'S overall marketing strategy, which aims,
among other things, to offer a multitude of services and products that will
facilitate the purchasing process. The development of the site has benefited not
only from the notoriety of the Lapeyre name but also from its wide-ranging
experience in the field through a network of 98 sales outlets.

The www.lapeyre.fr site is the result of more than 7 months work by an internal
team of 15 people and external consultants. Upon creating the site, they focused
particularly on the key ideas of ease-of-use and interactivity. The site totals
1,200 pages divided into 4 different sections: E-catalog, Discovery, Services
and Advice.

Furthermore, the site offers nearly all the standard LAPEYRE product references
for sale on line, i.e. over 7000 items of joinery for internal and external use
(windows, interior and exterior doors, stairways, portals, storage spaces,
etc.).

To start with the site will be available to web users in the Ile-de-France
region and will progressively be extended to the rest of the country by the end
of 2001, following the analysis customer and web user reactions.

Thanks to this new internet site and e-commerce service, LAPEYRE'S objectives
are:

*  to create more interaction between the clients and the outlets (preparation  
   of a project, purchase of a product, request for information, etc.);

*  to appeal to new markets (women, households with strong purchasing power, new
   property owners) by giving itself an innovative and attractive brand image; 

*  to increase its volume of business by developing its activities in the       
   outlets and through the contribution of transactions made on the web.

The creation of the new Lapeyre site lies within the framework of the internet
strategy implemented by the Saint-Gobain Group, Europe's no. 1 distributor of
building materials, which focuses on three complementary initiatives:

*  the development of marketing and merchant sites for the Group's sales outlets
   in France (Lapeyre, GME, Point P, La Plateforme du Batiment, etc.) and abroad
   (Raab Karcher and Jewson);
     
*  the creation of new, entirely virtual, ultra-specialized brands;

*  the creation of Build2pro, a European portal site that will group together an
   exhaustive range of products and services for companies active in the        
   building trade.