Meet Alban Le Pellec, founder of All-Seasons consulting & distribution agency
Alban Le Pellec, can you introduce yourself personally?
I could sum myself up as a lover of sport (personal activities like sport industry), challenge, and things well done. I am the father of 2 daughters, 6 and 8 years old, and am married and living in a suburb of Paris, in front of forests and the Versailles Castle.
I started my career in sports marketing before moving quickly to The Sports Brands. Then I took my first step in the Outdoor industry thanks to eight years at Millet, and then evolved in the American group, Wolverine Worldwide and its sports division represented by Saucony and Merrell. For more than 9 years, I held several positions as Key Account Manager, Sales Manager France, Country Manager, to finish European Strategic Director.
During this same period, I served as President of the Outdoor Commission of the “L’Union Sports and Cycles”, the French Sport Industry representation.
Then I had an opportunity as CEO for an Optical Company, fashion positioned. I held this position for two years. At the end of this adventure, the desire to return to the sports and the outdoor world was such that I first took part as a Mentor in the world’s first Innovation hub, “Le Tremplin” (Paris&Co).
Then very quickly, in Jan 2020, I decided to set up my own agency: All-Seasons, a consulting and distribution company, based between Paris and Annecy, France.
How did you come up with the idea of creating this agency?
Introduce us to All-Seasons?
All-Seasons was born out of a need to support Sport Brands that wish to develop in the French and European sports market in a very pragmatic way. With cash being the key, it is important to combine the strategic vision with a rapid but sustainable implementation. And it is on these axes that All-Seasons positions itself.
Concretely All-Seasons takes its source in years of exchange with Mick Midali, my partner in this adventure. There were needs and holes in the market and we have decided to respond by combining our skills. We want to guide our support with Sustainable brands.
Nowadays societies must be agile and All-Seasons is there to succeed. All a company may need to develop its sales in France and Europe (and in North America through “Global Sales Guys”) while guaranteeing its brand values and profitability.
What do you propose?
I propose that we intervene on several levels of commercial deployment in France and Europe.
3 Services, separate or combined:
- Consulting:brand strategy, business strategy, product positioning, internal process, Go To market, financial Forcast, supply organization, marketing positioning...
- Distribution:recruitment and Sales team management, Customer service management, Key Account management, showroom set up, merchandising, help on sell-out, training, forecasting, reporting and data monitoring.
- Services:proposal of internal or external experts, in ADV (for 1h/week, seasonally or full-time), in PR, in store events, in logistics (we can invoice at your behalf), in law... in order to facilitate for brands new in Europe, the management of these topics. All-Seasons will manage, link or follow up on each topic.
How is it innovative? What are your specifics?
All-Seasons is innovative in the sense that we offer all services related to the development of the brand and its turnover, bringing all the flexibility and expertise. You can find consulting agencies or distributors, but you will not find an agency like ours that brings together 2 founders with complementary experiences and offers a full package.I think that Distributors are not the right way to work for the brands and retailers because it split stock (so won’t bring flexibility to the direct to consumer business), this stock Brands don’t control anymore so you can’t control distribution segmentation; and in terms of brand positioning and marketing activity you can’t really control it neither.
Our services extend beyond borders because today too many companies have a country approach while the consumer and the Retail leaders do not really know borders anymore.
All-Seasons is specialized in Europe territory and we work closely with our US partner “Global Sales Guys”, Marty Carrigan and Sasha Dietschi Cooper to elevate our level of service in order to bring the best in class.
We also unify a community of agents, founded a family of professionals, the best professional in our industry. For example, we provide to our agents training (Excel or other), legal service, developing an innovative IT tool for them, we will compensate for their carbon footprint by replanting trees (“Reforest'action”) ...To give you a latest example we can help sell-out with events in store thanks to our partner “Aimko”.
Who are your customers today and who do you talk to more generally?
Our Partners are Outdoor brands and Running brands. The objective is not the race to the biggest brand portfolio, but a complementarity between brands with strong values, and build a real working relationship.
Nowadays there is so many offers on the market that for a brand succeed in Europe it has to be super focus on its positioning, its positioning has to be extremely clear and consistent. So, it’s the most important value we check.
We provide to our partners, “Lagoped”, “Holden”, “Ternua”, “FAR.run”, “Les Artist Paris”, on consulting or distribution missions. We also help with Mick Midali historical partners, “Merrell”, “Helly-Hansen”, “Black Crows” and “Izipizzi”.
We value proximity to our retail partners, whether local, regional, national, international, or e-commerce. Everyone is looking for the best brands, and each brand is looking for the best retailers. Only solid relationship allows us to match these two needs with the respect for both values.
What are the main demands and expectations of your customers today?
Our partners are looking for support for their European & French development. From Consulting to Distribution and quite often additional services. Europe is complex with its different languages, different laws, different historical habits, different money…
A market vision, seriousness to define and respect a selective distribution, common values, relationship with retailers-KA, it is what Brands are looking for. They want support from the product brief until sell-out. They want visibility across the entire value chain without the usual massive costs of a subsidiary.
Moreover, with this unprecedented period of economic disruption, Top managements will have to rethink their model, make important changes in their organizational structure, and in some cases reinvent itself. All-Seasons was founded for this and will be available to seize the opportunities.
Don't you think that the health crisis we are going through today will change attitudes? What impact can this have on your business?
The current crisis is by its unprecedented magnitude and its outcome is still a question mark. It affects the entire world, from production to sales. That’s why its financial impact will be extremely heavy.
I would like it to change the mindset and our consumption patterns because it seems obvious to me that a product that goes around the world twice before its sale is ridiculous. Despite this I fear that the economy that has been put to the test, will dictate the return to profits, and that bring only little changes.
Being pragmatic and optimistic I prepare for the restart. We must take advantage of this period to motivate economic actors to more responsible actions (such as Lagoped for example which produces 100% local and with 100% recycled materials), motivate brands to resize their organizations by helping them to achieve it, to rethink their product offer with more sustainability, to bring agility...
The proximity to our retailers that is at the heart of our DNA will continue to be fundamental to understand their situation and meeting their current and future needs.This period will, at least have virtue, I hope, of making thinking on key priorities, and open dialogue on new opportunities for collaboration.
What can we expect from you in the next few months?
First of all, we must all take care of ourselves, and hope that this crisis ends as soon as possible! Second, we must make the best use of this period of containment and prepare for the next with strategy.
On a short-term vision, in which it is to be hoped that companies in financial difficulty will find the means to survive in order to save jobs. States, banks, and our industry must help each other and reinvent themselves. All-Seasons will be available for anyone who wants to reinvent themselves.
And on a longer-term vision, we have to put the climate crisis back in mind and learning from this catastrophic period. Don’t let's go from one crisis to another.
Alban Le Pellec
Interview: A. Jouve from Sport Stratégie, April 2020