Why Branscome International Group exists

I have spent thirty years on a single question: How does a small producer in one country reach buyers in another?

I started answering it for a government. From 1993 to 2000 I ran North Carolina's international trade program out of Düsseldorf, with offices in London and Dubai, running trade fairs and state commerce across eighteen countries. Then I answered it for a global publisher and trade exhibition company, building a digital B2B marketplace for the home furnishings trade in 2001 — two decades before the industry was ready for one. Then for a developer, launching Las Vegas Market and World Market Center as a challenger to a market calendar one city had held for a century.

What I noticed, from each of those chairs, was the same thing. The system worked beautifully for large manufacturers and poorly for everyone else. A small British designer, an independent American maker, a Brazilian studio with real talent and no export capacity — all of them were producing work the market wanted and none of them could reach it. The barrier was never quality. It was access: the cost of a showroom, the length of a lease, the distance to a buyer, and increasingly the absence of the product data that decides whether anyone can find you at all.

So I kept building the way around it. A consortium of fifty British producers in 2003. A segmentation scheme inside Las Vegas Market that gave smaller exhibitors their own communities rather than leaving them lost in a hall. A curated collective of seventy American studios, running as a showroom and a digital platform at the same time. A hundred thousand square foot former mill building in High Point turned into shared workspace, shared equipment, business incubator and a route to the trade for people who could never have leased a showroom.

The digital half is not a recent interest. I built a B2B marketplace for this industry in 2001, advised the company building its product data infrastructure and two decades later, ran Mill Collective across both channels because by then it was obvious that a maker without a digital presence is invisible regardless of who they stand next to at market. The industry is still working this out. I have been at it for twenty-five years.

Branscome International Group is the practice that work turned into. The clients are trade agencies, associations, manufacturers, and platform owners across more than twenty countries. The question is still the same one.

Background

I began in the industry itself, at Häfele in Nagold, Germany, working on distribution and trade programs for the furniture hardware business as Eastern Europe opened.

From 1993 to 2000 I was International Trade Director for the North Carolina Department of Commerce, based in Düsseldorf and responsible for the state's export program into EMEA, with offices in London, Düsseldorf, and Dubai.

I moved to United Business Media (now Informa Group) in 2000 to lead internationalization of eBusinessMedia, its digital platform, and then served as Executive Director of Corridor.com, a B2B e-commerce marketplace for the home furnishings trade built as a joint venture with ABS. In 2002 I wrote the worldwide export strategy for the UK home furnishings sector, adopted by the Furniture Industry Strategy Group and the British Furniture Manufacturers and funded by UK Trade & Investment. I founded The British Home the following year — a consortium of fifty British SME producers reaching US retailers and designers through a shared showroom and exhibition program — while consulting to Merchandise Mart Properties on bringing European buyers to NeoCon and High Point Market.

From 2005 to 2011 I was Vice President International for World Market Center at Related Companies, on the executive team that launched Las Vegas Market. I built the international agent network, established partnerships with Messe Frankfurt, Koelnmesse, Fiera Milano and Tarsus, and created the segmentation scheme that gave design, sustainable products, textiles and outdoor furnishings their own B2B communities. I also launched Living Green, the market's sustainable furnishings program.

When Bain Capital and Oaktree Capital Management merged World Market Center and the majority of High Point Market into International Market Centers in 2011, I served as Vice President International on the executive transition team through the integration.

I founded Branscome International Group in 2012. Since then I have worked as Chief International Officer of Expo City - South Korea at Oaktree Capital Management, developing an experiential retail and trade platform with Gensler, Gale International, Korean Airlines and Hyunjin Shipping across New York and Incheon; as design export strategist for Apex-Brasil, building an export program for forty Brazilian design studios entering the US; as co-founder and CEO of Plant Seven; as founder of Mill Collective; and as business advisor to Amber Engine, the home furnishings product information platform acquired by Material Bank in 2022.

I currently advise Forestry Innovation Investment, British Columbia's forest products market development agency, and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.

I work in English and German, and am based in North Carolina and Scandanavia.

How we work

Every project is international. Not a specialization — the only kind of work we take.

We know one industry deeply.

Furnishings, from forest products to finished goods. We turn down work outside it.

We test before we recommend.

Demand gets validated with real prospective buyers and occupants, not modeled from comparables.

We scope tightly.

Every engagement has a defined question, a defined end, and a defined price.

We say what we think, early.

If the platform won't fill or the counterpart isn't serious, you'll hear it in private and with reasoning — while the information is still worth something.

We stay small deliberately.

You work with the person who sold you the engagement. No junior team learning on your budget.