Selling into France through distributors

How the market buys

French public purchasing is large and layered. The State and its agencies buy through ministries and national bodies; regions, départements and communes buy for their own estates, schools and services; hospitals buy individually, through regional hospital groups and through national purchasing bodies. Each layer publishes its own notices, which is why the French procurement landscape looks fragmented from outside.

Three places matter for a supplier. BOAMP, the Bulletin officiel des annonces des marchés publics published by DILA, is the official journal for public procurement notices. PLACE, the Plateforme des achats de l'État, is the platform where central government services, state public bodies, social security organisations and similar entities run their procedures and receive bids. UGAP is the national central purchasing body: it holds a catalogue of roughly 700,000 products and services across furniture, health, IT, education and other categories, and public buyers can order from it immediately without running a procedure of their own.

In our analysis of TED award notices for supplies (September 2026), 98% of the winners in the 7,280 notices from buyers in France were companies registered in the country (96% across the 30 EU and EEA countries); those local winners include distributors and dealers as well as manufacturers' own local subsidiaries — see our methodology. For a manufacturer the practical consequence is that French buyers buy from a company that can invoice in France, deliver nationally and answer in French — a distributor, a dealer, or a supplier referenced with UGAP. The distributors that already win in your category are the way in.

Lawful first contact

France is one of the countries where a first e-mail to a company is lawful. Article L34-5 of the Code des postes et des communications électroniques prohibits direct prospecting by e-mail that uses the contact details of a natural person who has not consented in advance. CNIL, the data protection authority, distinguishes consumers from professionals. For consumers, prior consent is required. For professional addresses, prospecting without prior consent is possible when the subject of the message relates to the recipient's professional function, and the recipient was told, when the address was collected, that they could object free of charge to any commercial use. CNIL's rules list generic addresses such as contact@ or info@ among the cases where prior consent is not required.

In practice, write to the generic address published on the distributor's website (info@, contact@, commande@ — CNIL says such addresses of legal persons are not subject to the consent rules), make the message about what the company sells, identify yourself fully, include a simple way to object, and honour any objection at once. Write in French, or at least open in French; a short message that respects the reader's time is the norm. A named professional address is personal data: CNIL allows prospecting to it without consent only where the person was informed, when the address was collected, that it could be used for prospecting and can object easily and free of charge, and the message relates to their job. An address copied from a website does not meet that condition.

What local distributors expect

French distributors are used to foreign suppliers but expect the groundwork to be done. The points they raise first:

• French-language documentation: technical sheets, instructions, safety data where relevant, and commercial terms. This is a legal requirement, not only a preference: the law on the use of French makes French mandatory in the presentation, instructions for use, warranty terms and invoices of products sold in France (Loi n° 94-665, article 2). Tender responses are in French, and the distributor will not translate your file for you.
• Conformity evidence appropriate to the category — CE marking and declarations where the product is regulated, test reports against the standards French buyers specify.
• A clear commercial structure: distributor margin, project pricing, territory, and who handles after-sales. Exclusivity is often asked for and should be discussed openly.
• Logistics that match public buyers' expectations: delivery across the country, reliable lead times, and the ability to hold a price for the duration of a multi-year framework.
• References, ideally public-sector ones from your home market, and samples.

The relationship tends to start small, with one range or one region, and widen once the distributor has seen the product win.

How to enter, step by step

1. Prepare a French file. Translate technical sheets, instructions, safety data where relevant and your commercial terms into French. Tender responses are in French, and a distributor will not translate your file for you.
2. Assemble conformity evidence. Have CE marking and declarations ready where the product is regulated, plus test reports against the standards French buyers specify.
3. Find who already wins your category. Start with the award notices above the EU thresholds on TED for your CPV codes; Cresques reads these and lists the winning companies. For lower-value awards, search BOAMP for notices of the type "Résultat de marché" (contract award results), which DILA also publishes as open data.
4. Check UGAP. See whether your category is in UGAP's catalogue of close to 700,000 products and services, and look up its public supplier index (Index fournisseurs), which lists UGAP's suppliers and the products behind each one. Public buyers order from that catalogue without a procedure of their own, so a supplier already listed there is in front of them.
5. Write the first e-mail lawfully. Use the generic address published on the distributor's website (info@, contact@), open in French, keep the message about what the company sells, identify yourself fully, include a free way to object and honour any objection at once.
6. Prepare the first meeting. Bring a clear structure for distributor margin, project pricing, territory and after-sales, a position on exclusivity, public-sector references from your home market and samples.
7. Show you can serve a framework. Explain how you will deliver across the country, meet lead times and hold a price for the duration of a multi-year framework.
8. Start small and follow up. Propose one range or one region, then widen once the product has won; keep checking new award notices in your categories to see where the distributor wins.

Where the evidence comes from

Above the EU thresholds — EUR 140,000 for supplies and services bought by central government bodies and EUR 216,000 for other public authorities from 1 January 2026 — French buyers must publish contract award notices, and those notices appear on TED, the online supplement to the Official Journal of the EU. Each notice names the winning company and is tagged with CPV codes, so the distributors winning, for example, office furniture or medical consumables contracts across France can be identified from the public record. Many lower-value awards are published nationally on BOAMP and on buyer profiles.

Cresques reads those award notices for the CPV categories you choose and shows who already sells that category in France. It does not help you bid for the contracts; the notices are evidence of who the buyers already trust, and the lawful first contact above is how you reach them.