For the first time in its history, Junior Consulting Sciences Po carries out a mission for a Malagasy company.
Based in Antananarivo (the capital of Madagascar), L.O.I Confection is a textile company specializing in women, children and babies ready-to-wear clothing. In October 2019, this company calls upon JCSP to carry out a market study of the clothing industry in Europe in order to acquire new customers.
The mission lasts 3 weeks and calls upon a JCSP consultant as well as two student directors with an interest and expertise in the industrial field. During these three weeks, the JCSP team carries out an inventory of all the clothing brands (corresponding to the criteria wanted by the customer) in France, England, Spain and Germany. In addition, many contacts have been established on the initiative of the student directors and the JCSP consultant in many other European countries.
The complexity of the mission resided mainly in the understanding of the client's activity. Indeed, the textile industry, especially in a country like Madagascar with very specific know-how and constraints, requires a lot of attention in order to be well apprehended and understood. Moreover, this study was complicated by the lack of public information disclosed by the clothing brands, especially concerning the selection criteria of their supplier base.
This is why the student directors of the mission tried (with success) to contact large clothing groups directly in order to extract a maximum of useful information for our study, and thus for our customer.
In conclusion of this mission, in a first time, Junior Consulting was able to understand the precise needs of the customer and brought him an exhaustive study which allowed the company, to date, to get in touch with about ten potential customers, who are in adequacy with the project of L.O.I confection.
In a second step, this mission marks a new era for JCSP which has managed to develop in accelerated way new processes allowing it to work more efficiently with foreign customers, especially on the African continent. It is now one of the objectives stated by the Junior Entreprise to continue its development, and to expand its commercial offer, to attract new customers based on the African soil.
Presentation of the consultant in charge of the mission :
Sofiane Bouhali
Alumni Manager & Consultant for JCSP
Master in Finance and Strategy, Sciences Po, Paris
"Doing at least one mission in Madagascar was something very important for me. Indeed, as a Malagasy national and very attached to this country, it was very important for me, having joined Junior Consulting, to do my best to create a link between our group and the Malagasy industrial area.
This first mission realized for a textile company is an important first step to try to convince other companies to trust us for possible future needs.
Having carried out most of my professional experiences in production companies (especially in the textile industry), this first mission was a godsend to test our capacity to deal with this type of problem.
It is agreed that JCSP has a card to play in this economic sector, especially abroad, and more particularly in Africa, a continent that many of our students understand and know well, especially those from the Europe-Africa program (Reims Campus)".