Connecting with our International Team Customers in India: A Story of Insights and Experiences with Damien Tergella

Our dynamic International Commercial team works closely with distributors and retail channel partners, providing extensive support that encompasses activities such as managing product orders, executing in-store merchandising, and launching digital marketing campaigns. Operating in diverse cultural environments, spanning various time zones, dealing with seasonal variations, and adapting to shifting consumer behaviors, adds a layer of complexity to our operations. This is a context where a "one-size-fits-all" approach simply doesn't apply.

A few years ago, Damien was assigned the responsibility of collaborating with the rest of the International Team to deliver regular updates on consumer trends and market dynamics across different regions. It was during this collaboration that the "Spotlight by Region" video series was initiated. These segments featured:

• Spotlight on Middle East
• Spotlight on LATAM
• Spotlight on Eurasia & French Speaking Africa
• Spotlight on APAC
• International Team - Recap for 2022

In August this year, Damien accompanied the now-retired Mark Coulson and his successor, Benjamin Verheijden, on a visit to India to meet with our customers and distributors. Damien produced a recap video, capturing the essence of numerous store and distributor visits. Seizing an opportunity, we decided to gain deeper insights into his personal experiences from this trip. We posed five questions to Damien, and, along with the recap video we mentioned, here are his own responses:

1. Damien, can you give us a quick rundown of your career journey at Colart so far, and what's your current job?

I started working at Colart first as an intern in 2017 before leaving to the USA to finish college. I then came back to Colart in 2018 for my first job in the International customer service. I have been able to discover and learn a lot especially about our International customers and building great relationships with them during this time and since 2021 I am part of the International marketing team and more specialized in the digital activation, dealing with our brands and digital teams, other digital CBUs, International distributors, artists/Influencers. This has been such a journey with the support of all the international team, customer service, sales managers, Mathilde/Jake and more recently Ceylan with a lot of knowledge sharing. Really pleased to have such great and talented people around me in this job.

2. This news article came to life because you sent me a video about your trip to India. How did that whole India adventure come about?

For International, Asia is a big focus and you have been able to see in past videos some of the great work the team is doing over there In store, on Ecom and Social Media. Asia is really growing fast on the digital side of the business and after discussing with Mark and Andy the idea of doing a first trip in Asia and especially India was  great for me to learn more about this part of the world and get closer to our partners there, pushing digital social media and influencers where they are quite good, and also focusing on Amazon to maximize our business over there. It was also the opportunity to discover a totally different market that we are used to see.

3. I know that your India trip was one of the last ones with Mark Coulson. What's the biggest lesson or insight you took away from that trip with Mark?

Yes exactly, I’m glad that I have been able to share the last trip of Mark after his 38 years in the company. Honestly I was impressed about all the work he has done in India and seeing the visibility of our brands over there is something we could be proud of. Mark is a book full of knowledge when it comes to our products so as you can imagine in every store we visited, he trained staff people in  just a few minutes on our products with a lot of knowledge and passion which is amazing to see. He has always been giving so many advice that will last with me and help me in my future for sure. I was also with Ben who is taking over the APAC Sales Manager role from Mark and doing this together has for sure put us in a great shape to continue what Mark has done during all those years.

4. Working in the International team, you deal with customers from all over the place, each with their unique backgrounds and ways of doing things. Can you share some standout differences you've noticed with our Indian customers compared to those from other regions? Any similarities or connections you've spotted?

This one would need a few pages as most of our customers are quite different especially in their ways of working and different cultures. Not always easy to get reporting from some partners, can be challenging sometimes when it comes to KPIs and ROI but we are very pushing them in this way. The way of success is really to adapt how we do/ask things with our partners. Sometimes some of them needs more in put and ready to use things from us, others like Australia are more advanced and tends to be more independent. What is really good is to share best practices between those countries and for example India has been developing W&N Dot cards with an artist favourite colours that was available in a Watercoulour book and appears to be quite a successs. This kind of activation we shared with other countries like Nepal or Australia recently. In India, what can be different is the in store part, from counter shops just on the street to more conventional stores like the Mango stores or more luxurious stores in the Shopping Mall. One thing remain in India is that the people in store were very happy to see us and happy to answer our questions and share feedbacks. For a more overall view we can clearly notice this contrast between the poverty you can see in the street to the richness in the Malls.

5. Lastly, what's the most significant professional or personal takeaway from this trip for you?

One big thing was obviously to strengthen the relationships with our partners and understand a bit more also how the market works and how it looks to see where we can support more, and we already discussed a few plans for 2024.

Overall, this country is very different from what we know in Europe/US, obviously, and I think as a takeaway, something around sustainability came to me where I think that we can be very proud of what we initiate here at Colart and in Europe/US, where I know the most in terms of environmental/social actions, but I am sure there will be more in the future to help those countries where you see the poverty in the slums, the waste, etc., but it is a wider question.

Anyway, I loved discovering this very colorful country with very nice people, and I am sure my dear Ben will remember the nice spicy food also.

Watch the video Damien produced that provides the visual story.

Through his openness and commitment, Damien has enabled our readers to gain a deeper understanding of the commercial and professional responsibilities of the International Team.

Thank you, Damien.