The Abbey of Our Lady of Bellefontaine, hidden among orchards and farmland 30 miles south of the medieval city of Angers, has little in common with other corporate headquarters in Europe.
The Cistercian monastery's staff canteen is a soaring refectory where meals are taken in silence. There are no gyms or vending machines or conference rooms - unless you count the chapel. And the chief executive is not some fist-pumping sales whizz but Brother Gérard, a 54-year-old monk in a cream cassock, black hood and sandals.
For the past six years, Brother Gérard has been president of Monastic, an association set up in 1991 to protect and develop the cottage industries run in monasteries throughout France, Belgium and parts of Germany.
Annual turnover has now reached more than £3 million, with the shop at Our Lady of Bellefontaine accounting for one tenth of that. Monastic now has 227 monasteries and convents as members and is spreading into Africa and the rest of Europe.
The association is pushing unashamedly into the huge market for spiritual consumer goods, already groaning with yoga videos, inspirational books by the Dalai Lama and lumps of crystal.
Brother Gérard and his administrative council, drawn from Monastic's member communities, are now expanding their range to exploit the trend towards ethical shopping and the appetite for organic products.
There are Monastic soaps and shampoos, body cleansers and herbal remedies. "Everyone wants natural products these days," says Brother Gérard, his eyes aglow at the commercial opportunities, "and we provide them."
The label - motto "Quality is not a mystery" - is applied only to products made by monks and nuns themselves.
The Cistercians of Begrolles sell apples from their orchards and produce fruit jellies. Among the 500 other products in the abbey shop are cheese made from sheep's milk by Dutch Benedictines, biscuits from La Joie de Notre Dame in the Morbihan, coffee from Cistercians in the Cameroon and embroidered pillows from Parisian Carmelites.
The idea for Monastic came when a French food conglomerate began advertising a cheese called Monk's Road. A group of nuns who lived near the factory, and who made their own cheese, were outraged.
So they came up with the idea of an association to guard against companies exploiting the image of monks and nuns. Monastic's members are mostly smaller communities who would be economically defenceless without it. But it has taken considerable tact to develop it into an efficient organisation without seeming excessively money-driven. "We don't do it for profit," says Brother Gérard. "In France, the monasteries receive no state support, so we need to make enough money to keep ourselves going. We make as much as we need and then stop."