Track Record

How the work looks.

No two market entries look alike. Different brand, different timing, different obstacle. These are the ones we opened, what we actually did, and what stood on the other side.

Track Record

How the work looks.

How a market was opened. How a partner was chosen. What it took to hold.

Château Margüi · Wine & Hospitality · France

An official wine partnership with the Cannes Film Festival.

Challenge
A private Provençal estate producing exceptional rosé, known inside French wine circles and almost nowhere else. No standing in the international premium trade, and no hospitality position to speak of.
What we did
International positioning for the wine and the property together. Trade and buyer introductions run alongside editorial visits to the estate, curated dinners for international journalists, and the development and management of the estate's participation as official wine partner of the Cannes Film Festival — content production, trade and press coordination, and an exclusive festival event.
Impact
Sustained coverage in Condé Nast Traveller, the Financial Times, FAZ, Tatler and Falstaff, and an established international reputation as a destination where wine, landscape and culture meet.
Rizzoli New York · Culture & Publishing · United States

An American publishing house, introduced to the French cultural trade.

Challenge
Rizzoli New York is a byword for the beautiful book in the United States. In France — where the relationship between culture, publishing and the press is unlike anywhere else — that authority does not transfer by itself.
What we did
A campaign built around the cultural and lifestyle editors best placed to give key titles the attention they deserved, positioning Rizzoli at the intersection of art, fashion and luxury rather than as an imported catalogue. Trade and press coordination included a title produced in partnership with Dior.
Impact
Editorial standing with the French cultural press, and a working method for a house whose credibility at home had to be rebuilt, market-side, in France.
Château d'Estoublon · Wine, Olive Oil & Hospitality · France

A Provençal estate brought to the German-speaking trade.

Challenge
Two collections — wine and olive oil — from a classified historic estate, with a substantial growth opportunity in the German-speaking markets and no distribution structure to carry it.
What we did
We opened and structured the German trade: identifying and qualifying premium importers and fine food retailers, negotiating the partnerships, then holding them. Curated evenings for category editors in Berlin, Munich and Hamburg ran alongside, with estate visits so the same writers saw the harvest and the mill for themselves.
Impact
A durable retail and hospitality presence across three countries, held over more than five years of continuous work.
Kusmi Tea
Kusmi Tea · Beverages · France

Fifteen years building a Parisian tea house across DACH.

Challenge
A brand well established in France, with the ambition to reach the same depth and cultural relevance in Germany, Austria and Switzerland — three markets that do not share France's relationship with tea.
What we did
A retail rollout as the commercial core: opening the right doors in all three markets, managing flagship and shop openings, running the in-store activations that turn a first purchase into a returning one, and holding the buyer relationships behind that footprint. Around it, an integrated market presence — category and lifestyle media, an influencer programme, curated consumer events.
Impact
A fifteen-year partnership, one of the longest in our history, and a DACH footprint built store by store rather than campaign by campaign.
Fauchon Paris
Fauchon Paris · Fine Food · France

Choosing the right German partner for a Paris luxury house.

Challenge
Fauchon has more than 135 years on the Place de la Madeleine. Entering Germany was not a question of awareness but of partners: in this category, the choice of partner is usually the single most consequential decision of a market entry.
What we did
Identification and qualification of trade and franchise partners for the German market — research-intensive work requiring an equal grasp of the brand's requirements and the German premium retail landscape — plus advisory on positioning, and an integrated trade presence across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Impact
A German entry built on the right foundations: qualified partners, defended positioning, and visibility with the buyers and editors who decide the category.
Valrhona
Valrhona · Fine Food · France

Translating a French benchmark for German-speaking professionals.

Challenge
Valrhona defines what it means to work with cacao at the highest level — a story deeply embedded in French culinary culture, and one that does not survive literal translation into German.
What we did
An integrated DACH programme across several registers at once: leadership and master chocolatiers positioned as authorities in the premium food conversation; substance-first sustainability work reaching trade and consumer press; a coordinated launch programme behind the German-language online shop; communications around a museum project and a major book; and trade fair presence managed with the same narrative discipline.
Impact
Recognition in the German-speaking trade as a custodian of craft rather than a supplier — and a digital launch supported by the professional audience that matters most to the category.
Malongo
Malongo · Beverages · France

Entering a loyal coffee market through the brand's own doors.

Challenge
Premium coffee in the German-speaking markets is a category people do not switch lightly. Distribution alone converts nobody: a French roaster arriving through someone else's shelf meets the customer on the worst possible terms.
What we did
We built the DACH retail and market strategy around placement rather than reach. The commercial core was the concept-store rollout — selecting the locations and managing the flagship openings, so the first encounter with the brand happened in a room the brand controlled. Buyer and trade relationships ran behind that footprint, with category and lifestyle media giving the name recognition before anyone reached the counter.
Impact
A German-speaking retail presence built store by store, on the brand's own terms, in a category where loyalty is won slowly and kept for years.
What Makes the Difference

The details that don't appear in a brief.

Timing

The right market at the wrong moment can cost a brand years. We advise on when as much as how — patience is sometimes the sharpest strategy.

Relationships

The doors that matter in Europe do not open for a deck. They open for people who have already been in the room. We have been in those rooms for twenty years.

Positioning

A story that works at home rarely survives the crossing unchanged. This is the part that is hardest to judge from outside Europe, and the part that decides most entries.

Continuity

These brands are still growing. Entry is a beginning, not a project. Our longest engagements run five, ten, fifteen years.