Opening four European markets without adding headcount
A lifestyle brand wanted to grow wholesale across Europe but could not justify another hire. We helped it qualify partners, standardise its price lists and run outreach from one place. Four markets opened with the same team, and reorder value increased 22% in comparison to other new markets and partners.
Three outcomes that defined the expansion
Outcome 1
+22% reorder value
Partners who ordered once began ordering again, and ordering more.
Outcome 2
Four new markets opened
DACH, Benelux, France and Italy, run by the same two people.
Outcome 3
No additional employees
The third hire the plan called for was not needed.
The challenge
The brand had a good home market and a wholesale channel that worked, run by two people. The plan called for four new markets, and the budget assumed a third hire to handle them.
The bottleneck was not selling. It was administration. Price lists lived in four spreadsheets in three currencies, partner records lived in a shared inbox, and nobody could say which products a given partner had actually listed without checking by hand. Adding four markets to that setup meant adding a person to maintain it.
The approach
We put partner qualification, price lists and product data in one place before any outreach started.
Partners were qualified against where comparable brands were already stocked, so the list was built from evidence rather than from search results. Each market got a price list in local currency derived from category-level discounts, which meant a new partner could be quoted the same day they replied. Atlo then monitored the partners who signed, so follow-up was driven by what was on the shelf rather than by whose turn it was.
Outreach ran one market at a time, so the team learned what each market asked for before scaling it.
The impact
The four markets opened over nine months with the same two people.
Reorder value rose 22% across the whole partner base, which came less from the new markets than from existing partners finally being followed up on time. The planned hire was deferred, and the team now spends the freed capacity on the large partners instead of on maintenance.
We budgeted for another account manager. We did not need one. The work that was going to justify the hire turned out to be the work we automated.
Opening four European markets without adding headcount
A lifestyle brand wanted to grow wholesale across Europe but could not justify another hire. We helped it qualify partners, standardise its price lists and run outreach from one place. Four markets opened with the same team, and reorder value increased 22% in comparison to other new markets and partners.
Three outcomes that defined the expansion
Outcome 1
+22% reorder value
Partners who ordered once began ordering again, and ordering more.
Outcome 2
Four new markets opened
DACH, Benelux, France and Italy, run by the same two people.
Outcome 3
No additional employees
The third hire the plan called for was not needed.
The challenge
The brand had a good home market and a wholesale channel that worked, run by two people. The plan called for four new markets, and the budget assumed a third hire to handle them.
The bottleneck was not selling. It was administration. Price lists lived in four spreadsheets in three currencies, partner records lived in a shared inbox, and nobody could say which products a given partner had actually listed without checking by hand. Adding four markets to that setup meant adding a person to maintain it.
The approach
We put partner qualification, price lists and product data in one place before any outreach started.
Partners were qualified against where comparable brands were already stocked, so the list was built from evidence rather than from search results. Each market got a price list in local currency derived from category-level discounts, which meant a new partner could be quoted the same day they replied. Atlo then monitored the partners who signed, so follow-up was driven by what was on the shelf rather than by whose turn it was.
Outreach ran one market at a time, so the team learned what each market asked for before scaling it.
The impact
The four markets opened over nine months with the same two people.
Reorder value rose 22% across the whole partner base, which came less from the new markets than from existing partners finally being followed up on time. The planned hire was deferred, and the team now spends the freed capacity on the large partners instead of on maintenance.
We budgeted for another account manager. We did not need one. The work that was going to justify the hire turned out to be the work we automated.
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