Paris Business Considered Exchange: Wild Country
Wild Nation Managing Director Martin Atkinson ended his HSBC Organization Contemplating Thought Exchange to Paris with renewed vigour and self-confidence. 
Photo: Stephan Gladieu
Wild Country is a single of the regional finalists in the HSBC Business Pondering initiative.
Martin Atkinson, a former skilled climber, is managing director of Wild Country.
The company types and manufactures technical rock climbing equipment with factories in Llanberis, Snowdonia and the Peak District, close to Sheffield, plus a web site in China.
Turnover was £3.3m in 2011 and the firm, which exports 45pc of its manufacturing, has much more than forty personnel.
Martin Atkinson writes:
Paris is a amazing city with numerous iconic cultural attractions. Importantly for Wild Nation it is also the residence of a lot of rock climbers.
Fontainbleau, the spiritual house of bouldering, a kind of rope-free of charge climbing, is 60km south of the centre and attracts hoards of Parisians at the weekend and “boulder pilgrims” from close to the world.
We are previously represented in Paris in “Au Vieux Campeur”, an remarkable outdoors store in the Rue des Ecoles, in which our range is nicely presented and the store floor personnel are enthusiastic supporters of our gear.
As for particular learnings from the Considered Exchange, we regularly heard the message in a multitude of kinds that a organization needs fantastic people, fantastic solution and requirements to think internationally to consider full advantage of the biggest growth possibilities.
This isn’t rocket science but it is helpful to verify basic values and approaches.
So what can British business understand from France? Naturally you can understand an unquantifiable quantity from a whole nation but if I had to choose 1 lesson we could understand it is that regardless of a continued occupation with the so referred to as ‘malaise francaise’ the French are actually fiercely proud of France and all things French and that projects a constructive image throughout the globe.
As for how the new business thinking gained on the Considered Exchange will help me run my organization better and develop growth possibilities, I’m going to maintain going carrying out what we do with renewed vigour and self confidence.