Transforming without fracturing: how Nicolas Coudert is reinventing an industrial company in the face of climate hazards 

Nicolas Coudert, managing director and acquirer of Sinthylène, a guest of Yannick Chammings on VISCONTI Talks.

In this episode of Visconti Talks, Yannick Chammings welcomes Nicolas Coudert, the acquirer of Sinthylène, an industrial textile-transformation company founded more than 60 years ago, specialising in the collective protection of professionals against climate hazards.

After a career in tech and the corporate world a medtech start-up, senior roles at Microsoft, the leadership of a software SME Nicolas Coudert made a choice that ran against the grain: taking over an industrial company, low-tech and built to last, between Lyon and Mâcon.

Behind this decision lies a far broader reflection on the posture of the acquirer, on managing one's own subjectivity, and on the art of transforming a company without breaking its soul.

Taking over to protect: a leader's vision

For Nicolas Coudert, an acquisition is not merely a financial transaction.

It is a project that makes sense.

Exploring Sinthylène's original documentation, he rediscovered a word written into the company's DNA from its very inception: protection. A calling somewhat lost over the years, which the catalogues had replaced with a generic "leader in bespoke fit-out".

Where others saw an industrial SME stuck in its ways, he saw a mission: to protect professionals against climate hazards heat, hail, wind, floods, forest fires.

Resilient products, durable, with real impact. Everything he had been looking for after years spent in tech.

Building a clear remit, managing one's subjectivity

The encounter with Sinthylène did not fall from the sky.

It was the culmination of more than a year of searching, of files set aside and of directors deemed not yet ready in their plans to sell. A precise remit sector, geography, financial capacity, the quality of the relationship with the sellers served as his compass.

But a remit is not enough. At VISCONTI, one of the six great challenges of the leader is precisely the ability to manage one's subjectivity without becoming its prisoner.

How, then, does one reconcile gut feeling and clear-headedness?

Nicolas Coudert's answer comes down to two words: cross-cutting perspectives.

To challenge his own intuition, he brought in people close to him from the building trade, from industry, from the manufacturing world fields he did not master. Site visits, questions on the financial and commercial fundamentals, contradictory opinions willingly sought.

Because an acquisition is never transformed without conviction. But a conviction has to be tested.

Transforming without fracturing: time as an ally

To take over a 60-year-old company is to inherit a history.

A founder, then a family handover, and today a new chapter. Nicolas Coudert does not see himself as a starting point, but as a link in an industrial continuity.

Hence a clear course, set from day one: not to break the existing model. To observe it, to question it, to bring transparency then to transform, gradually.

It is also here that he identifies, in hindsight, what he could have done differently.

The human dimension, first of all. In an industrial company, he admits to having slightly underestimated it the HR difficulties encountered in 2025 brought this to light. Discovering his teams only fifteen days before the takeover did not help: the phase of mutual discovery takes time, and that time must be accepted.

His conviction today: to address warning signs as early as possible, without ever rushing employees who hold the company's true know-how.

In practical terms, this means simple gestures a barbecue, opening the factory to families, bringing back retirees to pass on their expertise and stepping up client visits, a driver of transformation and innovation for a company used to selling at a distance.

Why a leader chooses to be coached

Nicolas Coudert knows the isolation of the entrepreneur.

With no business partner, and unwilling to place the strategic choices on his family alone, he reached a conclusion: he needed an outside perspective, someone able to challenge him.

The trigger? A healthy company, but one bought at a high price, whose LBO debt burden weighs on the early years. How to ease it? The logical answer growth, and therefore a vision and a plan meant moving out of the reactive mode of the early days and into anticipation.

Yannick Chammings's coaching brings him three levers:

• A common language, because his coach has an entrepreneurial track record of his own
• Structured thinking, so as not to convince himself, alone, that his decisions are the right ones
• An entrepreneurial discipline, which imposes what is most lacking: time and perspective

The TMA assessment, more in-depth than anything he had known, plays a key role here: knowing one's strengths, one's weaknesses, and above all knowing how to surround oneself with profiles that complement one's own.

Nicolas Coudert's advice to acquirers

Several strong convictions emerge from this conversation for those considering an acquisition:

• Show humility and patience with the teams in place, without disrupting the organisation too quickly
• Address warning signs immediately, particularly on people-related matters
• Multiply outside perspectives, during the assessment and throughout the journey
• Never neglect the human dimension, even and especially in an industrial business
• Go and meet your clients, to steer transformation and feed innovation

What we take away from this conversation

Business acquisition, the passing on of expertise, and a mission of protection: this episode shows that an acquirer is not merely a buyer, but the custodian of a history that they help to grow.

And it serves as a reminder of a truth that industry sometimes forgets: lasting transformation rests as much on strategy as on the time given to the women and men who make the company.

Nicolas Coudert's ambition for Sinthylène? To make it enduring, well beyond his own tenure and to keep protecting professionals against climate hazards that grow ever more frequent.