Reason Number 1: Culture – The Capital Base

I was consulting for an Indian entrepreneur who had decided to start up a company in France in imports. He told me that there is a saying in his business circle that goes, “if you can make a company work in France then the rest of Europe is simple.” That is why he had decided to start with France. When I met him, he had been working on the project for three years and still had not found the right mix. I told him that the next time he heard that phrase to answer by saying “the Germans have an expression, too, to live like gods in France!” Of course he did not understand my private joke so I had to explain it.

France is a lot of things for a lot of different cultures. The English love hating them as a people, but become good friends with every single one of them they ever get a chance to meet. Americans find them obnoxious, impolite and aloof, but budget the most expensive vacation of their lifetimes around just a few days in their capitol or their Mediterranean beaches. The Germans dream of living like gods in France, but have invaded the country three times in the last century and a half. When I ask my German friends why they do not just move here, most of them say that they love vacationing but feel the French are too undisciplined. That, in part for me, explains the last two World Wars. There is no culture in Europe that does not have a paradoxical set of stereotypes in regards to the French. And there is no culture I have ever encountered that resembles them in any way or has any desire to do so. That’s just fine for the French. They have a reputation to uphold. They are different. “Viva la difference!”

There is a key to understanding why companies are so hard to start up in France. Two thousand years of culture is France’s largest economic asset and Tourism their top market. Any business venture, no matter how profitable or even how useful for the French citizen, must be checked and tested to make sure that it does not damage in any way whatsoever the country’s capital base. It took McDonald’s a decade in order to get a foothold. Burger King tried hard and failed. It took Disneyland Paris the twenty years I have been here to make their mix work, and the French themselves still never go there. I have waited just as long to be able to buy a bottle of cranberry juice off the shelf in a supermarket.

There are no laws prohibiting a new idea or concept to open up for business in France. They do not need them. The entire collective consciousness of the country is trained to keep things out, starting with the consumers. They are the mass, but they have their champion defenders in every professional walk of life from civil servants, administrators, and banks to buyers, wholesalers and traders. There is no surer way to fail in France than to announce that you have the newest, coolest thing, unless you are Steve Jobs. And I am sure that even he takes France seriously enough not to count on the market to meet his break-even targets. The only other way to lose French consumer sympathy is to treat them as if they are conservative.

France is tricky. It takes more money and more time than anywhere else in Europe to make something happen. Whatever you want to do here, you need to make sure that it does not mess with the capital base. Never undermine the pride they have in their own culture. They have a reputation for being a tough country to crack and they are proud of that reputation. That, too, has become a part of their culture, and therefore is now a part of their capital base.

Radja, the Indian businessman, laughed at my explanation. He related with it all too well, coming from a culture that could boast 5000 years of civilization. He told me that in India they were not afraid of losing their cultural heritage, because they knew that is was something that could not be lost, even if you try. That is when I laughed. Venerable cultures like his own, had a whole different set of problems and traditions to deal with when doing business, and the thing he was most afraid of was project lethargy. I told him that France was going to continue to be frustrating for him. In order to keep projects rolling here, you need long-term financing, local partners and three-year objectives. In sum; a great deal of patience and determination. That was when he asked me which bank was best to use. I answered by asking him if the Bank of India had an office in Paris.