After three years of careful preparation, Groupe Adèle is launching operations in France. The goal is ambitious: within five to ten years, Gaétan Migneault and Julie Bergevin, the company’s owners, expect to see over 1,000 franchises established—and this is just the beginning, as the SME has its sights set on other countries as well.
In France, the strategy is to establish 10 to 15 Adèle master franchises, each of which will sell and operate 50 to 70 individual franchises. “The very first franchisees will come to Québec for training and will be operational within the next year,” explains Gaétan Migneault, President.
It was the French government, through the agency Invest in France, that approached the company. This organization identifies foreign businesses with serious potential and encourages them to invest in France to create jobs.
“We are entering a country with a significant unemployment problem, offering a structured model that allows someone to start a business with only €30,000. Considering that each franchise can employ 3 to 7 people, the Adèle project in France could ultimately create 5,000 jobs,” adds Gaétan Migneault.
This expansion comes at a time when France’s personal services industry is booming. “There are incentives that allow clients to deduct part of the cost of a service from their taxes, provided that the service provider declares their income,” says the President of Groupe Adèle.
As early as 2010, the partners joined an economic mission organized by the Québec Franchise Council and attended a franchising expo in Paris. It was there that they found their French partner, with whom they founded Adèle France, of which they remain the majority shareholders.
“It was important to have a French partner who understands the laws and procedures to support franchisees locally, act as an intermediary with banks, and bring credibility in an unfamiliar market,” emphasizes Julie Bergevin, Vice-President.
The two entrepreneurs have worked hard to adapt to French business culture and its extensive bureaucracy.
“Starting a business in France is very complex. Something as simple as opening a bank account feels like the 12 Labors of Asterix!” adds Julie Bergevin. “Not to mention that the vocabulary is very different. Even though we speak French, it’s not the same language.”
Another must-do: adapting services to French habits.
“There, you have to offer ironing services; it’s essential to win clients. In France, most people don’t have dryers, fabrics are different, and clothing requires more ironing. That’s part of customer expectations,” says Gaétan Migneault.
In a country where the wealthiest have employed domestic staff for centuries, it may come as a surprise that a well-structured residential cleaning industry was virtually nonexistent.
“They have housekeepers, but like here, everyone does things the way their mother taught them. We’re going to create the industry the way we did in Québec.”
Indeed, before Adèle was founded in Québec, no one in the business world had approached residential cleaning with the quasi-scientific methodology that Gaétan Migneault applied when he created the company in 1994.
At the time, it was already his third career. Previously, he had spent 14 years in insurance and then served as Vice-President of Groupe Vertdure, a company specializing in fertilization.
“I took a sabbatical year to reflect on my next challenge,” he recalls. “One evening, while reviewing my notes, I realized how much I loved the hotel experience—the small attentions, the care taken with the rooms. You leave the room in the morning and return in the evening, and everything is perfect. If it’s a good hotel, there’s even a little chocolate on the bedside table. I decided to bring that experience into people’s homes.”
From seven in the morning to ten at night, for ten months, he researched, met with commercial cleaning experts, and conducted tests even before finding his first client.
“There was no expertise in residential cleaning. How do you clean a bathtub so it stays clean longer? Where does dust come from? What are the best products? How can time be saved? These were the questions I asked myself to develop a work method that could be replicated in any home, and to select the best cleaning products to maximize results.”
Julie Bergevin, a trained lawyer who practiced maritime law for five years, dreamed of making her mark in business and revolutionizing a field, much like Coco Chanel or Helena Rubinstein. Seeing the success Gaétan was having with his new company, she proposed starting Adèle in Montréal with him.
In 2001, the two partners created their franchise model, which has grown exponentially since. Today, the group has around 100 franchisees in Québec and about 15 in Ontario. Each month, they receive 20 to 40 applications from candidates interested in acquiring a franchise in Québec, from which they select three or four based on criteria they prefer to keep confidential.
After France, the next step could be the United Kingdom or Germany, two countries also interested in welcoming the company. Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg represent additional promising markets.