After the inauguration in December 2021 of a first store in New York and a third in Paris, the high-end ready-to-wear brand Officine Générale plans to open more than a dozen stores within three years, especially on American soil.

After opening seven boutiques in Paris, London and New York, General Officine is continuing its deployment in France and the United States – a long-standing project –, in particular thanks to the support of the American investment fund Untitled Group, which entered the capital of the company in May 2021. Meeting with Pierre Mahéo, founder of the brand , and Vanessa Bonnefoux, General Manager.

La French Touch: How do you organize yourself to coordinate several simultaneous openings?

Pierre Maheo : To manage everything, on time, you need extremely motivated teams. During the pandemic, we signed our first New York store – our largest to date – by Zoom. We then had to follow the work from 5 km away with GoPros!

Vanessa Bonnefoux : As we have opened many businesses in France, Europe and abroad, particularly in the United States, our expertise allows us to save time. We have developed a real toolbox that allows us to manage 3 or 4 openings at the same time.

LFT: Precisely, what will be the next cities to host your stores?

PM: We are currently finalizing a point of sale in Los Angeles and we are in negotiations to open a second in New York. Then, we plan to attack other American cities. At the same time, we are working on various French cities: we signed Aix-en-Provence and we are interested in the cities of Lyon, Bordeaux and Lille. We manage to manage these openings in the regions quite smoothly. If the workload remains substantial, it is still easier to open stores in one's country than on the other side of the planet.

LFT: How did you surround yourself to carry out all these openings?

GB: We are accompanied by an accounting firm, which is part of a network with which I have been working for almost 10 years. While we still have the same lawyer, with whom we work on all matters, even corporate, we have also retained the services of an American firm specializing in negotiations for our overseas openings. And I am in the process of identifying another lawyer profile to help us with the corporate part and the implementation of standards in the United States.

PM : In this kind of market, which is difficult to access, you need to have the right lawyer, one in whom you have complete confidence, in order to sign the best lease for the company.

LFT: What challenges or obstacles do you encounter on American soil?

GB: The United States is a country of middlemen. We never have the elements live, everything takes time and is very expensive. For example, to obtain a simple Electronic Payment Terminal (TPE), we needed no less than five intermediaries. Before doing anything, there are therefore a lot of negotiations, verifications and validations. And then, you have to be agile to monitor the progress of operations in a very precise way.