SPOTLIGHT
DEVELOPING
a multi-local approach Former Fiducial Office Solutions Managing Director Laurent Bertrand is now leading France’s largest independent dealer, Lacoste Dactyl Bureau & École. In a currently rare outing, OPI’s Andy Braithwaite recently caught up with Bertrand at the firm’s head office near Avignon
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aurent Bertrand was not away from the French office products industry for long following his departure from Fiducial Office Solutions in mid-2018 after 15 years with the company. Nine months after leaving the Lyon-based reseller, he was named Managing Director of the country’s largest dealer, Lacoste-Dactyl Buro (LDB), as it was then known. LDB came into existence at the end of 2018 when two regional French dealers – Lacoste, based in the south, and Dactyl Buro, located in the centre of the country – merged in a leveraged buyout. This transaction created France’s first ‘multi-local’ independent reseller, with the potential to expand its reach nationwide. In 2019, the company generated annual revenues of about €100 million ($120 million), employed 520 staff and had 40 locations (offices, warehouses and stores) dotted around the country. When Bertrand joined LDB, he was tasked with integrating the two companies, moving them onto a common IT platform, developing a single e-commerce solution, and optimising the distribution network for its office products and educational supplies offerings. He was right in the middle of this project when COVID-19 hit in March 2020. “It was a real nightmare,” he says. “We had to switch almost overnight to coordinating everything in a virtual working environment. Having said that, the fact that the level of business declined dramatically did provide a
window of opportunity to make good progress with various aspects of the integration, especially as regards the supply chain. “When I look back now, it’s difficult to say whether COVID made things more challenging or, strangely enough, actually helped us,” he notes. “But when orders began picking up again in June [2020], we were up to speed both in terms of logistics and the IT systems.” REBRANDING In January 2021, the two companies legally merged and the business rebranded to Lacoste Dactyl Bureau & École (LDBE). There was a subtle change in the spelling of ‘Bureau’ (from Buro) to the standard French form of the word ‘office’, while ‘École’ was added to highlight its expertise in the school supplies market.
It’s difficult to say whether COVID made things more challenging or, strangely enough, actually helped us
Laurent Bertrand
“It was important to show our true activity and to illustrate through our logo and trademark that we are a French player,” Bertrand explains. The approach to merging the legacy Lacoste and Dactyl Buro businesses has been a pragmatic and realistic one. It has not been a question of taking a hammer to either and trying to drive home a single corporate culture or imposing one set of values over another. Quite the opposite. Bertrand recognises there are separate ‘north’ and ‘south’ cultures, but he is happy to keep it this way. “You have to accept the differences and try and build on the strengths of each to develop the whole,” he states. “Company culture isn’t something that is decided; it’s the result of something; in our case, the realisation of our project and what we want to achieve.”
