We went from 6% of revenue coming from international in 2022 to 25% this year.
Florence Potier
Présidente, Groupe Échelle Internationale, speaking in 2026
AT A GLANCE
Situation
The founders retired at the end of 2021. The incoming leadership knew the company well. Neither of them had run its international business.
Constraint
The French market was saturated and heavily contested. Growth had to come from outside.
Decision
Move from replicated franchising to owned subsidiaries in Spain and Canada.
ALTIOS scope
Six months of work in 2023 were dedicated to developing an international strategy to take the company to the next level. The work focused on market analysis, potential expansion models, a local e-commerce strategy, and the organizational structure needed to support growth.
COMPANY OVERVIEW
Groupe Échelle Internationale designs, manufactures and installs solutions for working and moving at height, safely.
The range runs from ladders and scaffolding through to custom platforms and stairs, built in the group’s own workshops near Montpellier. It sells and installs through 54 points of sale in France and abroad, part branches and part franchises, under the L’Échelle Européenne network brand.
THE CHALLENGE
Founders tend to keep international close, because they opened those markets themselves. When they leave, the markets stay and the reasoning goes with them.
That is what the new leadership inherited at the end of 2021, when the founders stepped back and Florence Potier took over with the group’s sales director, backed by iXO Private Equity. Between them the two covered the business. International had been the founders’ territory.
“International was handled entirely by the previous management. So we started again from close to a blank page.”
Florence Potier, Présidente, Groupe Échelle International
The timing left no soft option. In France the market was competitive, heavily fought and close to saturated. International was not one growth path among several. It was the growth path.
And the footprint already existed. Franchise partners had run Spain and Belgium for years, and the group had been in Canada since 2014. Twenty years of international presence, built as a copy-paste of the French model. The new leadership saw far more potential than that structure was capturing.
ALTIOS came in on a recommendation from iXO, whose investment thesis centres on companies in niche markets with a strong international dimension. Structuring that dimension properly was the point of the mandate.
THE SOLUTION
Six months of strategy work, 2023.
The group had inherited results without inheriting the reasoning behind them. The mission started by rebuilding that reasoning, market by market.
Three things came out of it that the group did not have before.
A map of the addressable customer base. The group had no complete picture of who its target customers actually were. That mapping came first, because every deployment decision downstream depends on it.
A challenge to the value proposition. Reviewing how the offer was positioned made it possible to prioritise some routes to market and deliberately drop others. Knowing what not to pursue is half of a roadmap.
Evidence from Canada. The group had instincts about the Canadian market. The analysis surfaced market signals that confirmed them, which is what turned a hunch into a defensible investment case.
The roadmap was co-built with management and handed to the group’s own teams to deploy. It also raised a question the group had not yet framed: what head office should be doing to support international acceleration, rather than leaving each market to run its own local plan.
Two months on e-business, June and July 2024.
A focused module on the digital side of international development, commissioned once the roadmap was already underway.
ALTIOS delivered the read and the roadmap. Groupe Échelle Internationale deployed it. That split was deliberate, and it is why the group points to its own execution rather than to a consultant’s. The team kept checking in after the mission closed, on how the plan was going.
FROM STRATEGY TO ACTION
The question was not which market to enter next. It was whether to keep expanding through franchising, or to own the operation.
The group had changed shape more than once, from distribution franchise to manufacturer to installer. Integrating that value chain opened models that had not been available before.
The answer was subsidiaries, starting with the markets it was already in. Those subsidiary operations employ 40 people.
RESULTS
6% → 25%
2
40
2023 → 2026
International share of revenue, 2022 to 2026
Owned subsidiaries: Spain, Canada
People across subsidiary operations
From roadmap to 25% international
Six percent in 2022. Strategy mission in 2023. E-business module in 2024. Twenty-five percent in 2026.
WHAT CHANGED INSIDE THE COMPANY
The biggest shift was not a market. It was the order in which decisions get made.
“Stop thinking about France (home market) first and then how to develop internationally. Build the international dimension into every decision from the start. A product launch, a service, a website. If you really want to grow abroad, you reason internationally from the outset“
Florence Potier, Présidente, Groupe Échelle International
Asked who she would recommend the approach to, she answers on cost rather than on ambition.
“Going international is expensive. You need to start on solid ground. That is the reassurance ALTIOS can bring at the outset“
Florence Potier, Présidente, Groupe Échelle International
Tips and Best Practices
International-First Decision Making. Most companies decide for France, then ask how to adapt it abroad. Build the international dimension into the decision itself, whether it is a product launch, a service or a website.
Map Your Customers Before Your Markets. A country is not a target. Knowing precisely who buys, and why, is what makes a market entry plan executable rather than aspirational.
Audit Before You Expand. The group was already in Spain, Belgium and Canada. The gain came from re-reading those markets, not from adding another flag.
Franchise Versus Subsidiary. Treat the operating model as a live question, not an inherited one. A model that worked at the distribution stage may not fit once you manufacture and install.
The Cost Of Starting Badly. Export is expensive. A sequenced roadmap upfront is cheaper than a market entry that has to be unwound.
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