JEAN-CLAUDE FORESTIER’S INTERVIEW

Check out our video of the week featuring Jean-Claude Forestier, Vice-président of Petit Forestier Group, the European leader in refrigeration rentals. He explains the challenges in exporting a business model abroad.

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES IN EXPORTING A BUSINESS MODEL ABROAD?

When exporting a model, it must always be adapted to the country in question, or to the geographical area in question. It is on this tuning that success depends.

The first difficulty in addition to this cultural adaptation is the selection of people, finding the right people, with both knowledge of the local market and knowledge of our history and culture.

It was done naturally at the beginning, with French collaborators who accompanied us on the spot, then very often with a local, either a number two, or a future number one that we will train over time.

In some areas, this is not easy, since the profession does not exist, obviously the culture is not there, and that was a little bit of a challenge. This is our challenge, in fact, for the coming years. We have new areas, but we don’t necessarily have a man.

I think the next generation will be well adapted. It is already very international. It is interesting to be able to duplicate these models on new areas. Of course, it’s exciting.

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