Anonymised case profile · Cross-Border Build

Bavarian Tier-1 automotive supplier.

A family-owned Bavarian Tier-1 automotive supplier in the Munich and Stuttgart corridors, responding to a multi-decade European OEM relationship redirecting battery-component sourcing to US plants under IRA Section 30D. Anonymised composite profile drawn from corridor patterns.

The firm

The firm in shape.

A family-owned Bavarian Tier-1 automotive supplier in the Munich and Stuttgart corridors. Multi-decade operating history. Annual revenue in the mid nine figures in euro. European OEM relationships across body, chassis, powertrain, and battery-component segments. Home-market product-market fit confirmed across multiple OEM platforms. IATF 16949 and ISO 9001 certified. PPAP and APQP cadence calibrated against European OEM procurement.

The firm had been in motion in the United States for fourteen months at the start of the engagement. A US sales head hired into the existing German frame. A US engineering liaison stationed near a US OEM plant in the Carolinas. The firm's translated home-market website live for the US market. EUR-denominated quotes still standard. PPAP and APQP cadence still calibrated against European procurement clocks.

The market entry challenge

What the IRA Section 30D shift opened.

The Inflation Reduction Act and Section 30D battery-localisation rules pulled the firm's anchor European OEM toward US-based battery and electronics consolidation. The OEM asked the firm to qualify in the United States to retain the relationship across electric-vehicle platforms. Three additional US OEM conversations opened in parallel, two of them with named US automotive primes evaluating Tier-1 suppliers for new US plant builds.

The firm's US-facing surface was not built for the conversations. The home-market site led with the certificate stack, the multi-decade history, and a capability matrix. The US sales head was working from a translated deck that opened with the same signals. The pricing was still in euro and held back until the relationship warmed. The PPAP and APQP cadence the European OEMs accepted as careful was reading to US OEM purchasing as commercial inexperience. The fourteen-month US sales hire was at risk of attrition.

The approach

Cross-Border Build, three to six months.

Discovery and category architecture. Read the existing US-facing surface end to end. Identify the four US OEM conversations and the category positioning required for each. Lock the category architecture for the US-facing site, the deck, and the RFQ stack.
US-facing site rebuild. Site replacement that opens with US category claim, surfaces US OEM peer set, names US service and parts architecture, names USD pricing posture, and routes the US procurement reader directly to the firm's US sales lead. The German site keeps running unchanged for the home market.
Deck and RFQ stack. Replacement deck written for US OEM purchasing readers, RFQ response template calibrated for US OEM PPAP and APQP cadence, executive summary and US installed-base statement at the top, technical attachments after.
US service and parts architecture. Discrete US-readable statement of spares lead-time, on-site engineer placement, uptime guarantee structure, and US warranty posture, surfaced as a discrete page on the US-facing site and in the US deck.
Principal register and US-facing voice. Geschäftsführer LinkedIn rewritten for the US reader. US-facing biography and US-facing trade-publication posture for both the Geschäftsführer and the US sales lead. US podcast and panel-appearance plan for the next two quarters.
IRA Section 30D and USMCA-RVC mapping. A discrete page in the US-facing materials stack that maps the firm's battery-component sourcing posture against IRA Section 30D and USMCA regional value content thresholds, written for US OEM compliance and procurement readers. Legal and tax interpretation by US counsel; the firm built the commercial mapping.

The outcome

What was rebuilt.

The US sales lead walked into the next round of US OEM conversations with a US category claim, a US installed-base statement, a US-firm USD pricing posture, a US service and parts architecture, and an IRA Section 30D commercial mapping page that the OEM purchasing readers had been asking for. The fourteen-month sales hire moved out of attrition risk. Three of the four US OEM conversations advanced through PPAP and qualification. The anchor European OEM relationship was retained at the US level.

The home-market business continued unchanged. The German principal voice continued unchanged. The European OEM relationships continued through the home-market interface. The US-facing layer ran in parallel, calibrated for the US OEM purchasing reader.

This profile is an anonymised composite drawn from corridor patterns rather than from a single named engagement. Specific outcome numbers are not published. Named case studies are added as client opt-in is secured.

Scope boundary

What this engagement did not include.

No legal services, no entity formation, no visa work, no tax structuring, no banking introductions, no IRA legal opinion, no FDA or NHTSA submission preparation, no fiduciary services, no IP filing, no recruiting, no M&A advisory. These were handled by German counsel, US counsel, and IRA, USMCA, and trade-policy specialists in parallel.