Blow Up the Entire Chain at Once

“François Pinault then realized that the only way out for him was to forcibly carve out a role that was not planned. He took the plunge, not just metaphorically, and decided to blow up not one link, but the entire chain at once, which involved switching from loading one or two wagons at Saint-Malo to an entire ship in Scandinavia and, importantly, featuring only one intermediary agent instead three, the agent of the sellers. This was feasible for someone who had no experience in maritime transportation because this agent of the Scandinavian exporters also took care of the chartering of the ships. However, this was a transition from one or two wagons to a ship, which is a change in scale in volumes and in money from one not to ten or twenty, but squarely to a hundred.”

“From this moment on, and for as long as his main objective will be the timber industry, his fixed idea will be to combine his own growth with that of his profit margins. This can only be achieved by conquering new positions first upstream and then downstream, in order to eliminate as many intermediaries from his circuit as possible, and also to secure his rear.”