How the business crisis transformed Digital CHR

There are businesses you create because you spotted an opportunity. And there are those you create because you can’t stand watching a problem that nobody solves.

Digital CHR is the second kind.

2016 — The sector is booming. I see something else.

When I launch the Digital CHR activity in 2016, the hospitality sector is thriving. Everywhere.

France: 442 million tourist overnight stays — a record. The restaurant industry generates €58 billion in revenue, up +5.4% year-on-year. Les Échos headlines read « another bumper year for French hospitality. »

United Kingdom: 46,850 pubs open, the sector holds strong. Chains are expanding, investors are confident.

United States: record hotel occupancy at 65.5%. RevPAR (revenue per available room) up +3.2%. Global tourism crosses 1.4 billion international arrivals.

Everyone is optimistic. No one is preparing for what’s coming.

But me, on the ground, I already see the problem: restaurant owners and small businesses are drowning in digital. Not because the market is struggling — because the tools are fragmented, expensive, incomprehensible. The sector grows, but the small players are already underwater.

2019 — The company is born. The agency takes shape.

I set France Je Te Quitte aside. The blog had done its job — a pioneer in expatriation content, before TikTok, before « digital nomads » in swimsuits on Instagram. But in 2019, Digital CHR becomes a real company. Another urgency is calling.

The restaurants, hotels, bars, and shops around me are struggling with digital like a beginner swimmer thrown into the middle of the ocean. They have:

• A booking tool (they barely understand)
• Another for social media (they neglect)
• Another for Google reviews (they dread)
• Another for their website (they forget)
• Another for CRM (they don’t have)

Everything is scattered. Everything is expensive. And nobody offers them something simple. Not « simple to sell. » Simple to use.

I create Digital CHR to be that solution. My team and I do by hand what technology doesn’t yet automate: community management, websites, customer reviews, digital marketing. Bespoke. Human.

The golden trap of the agency model

On paper, the model is beautiful:

A client pays €379/month. One community manager handles 15 clients. 15 × 379 = €5,685 revenue per CM. The CM costs €2,500–3,000 loaded. Margins exist. All good.

Except real life isn’t a spreadsheet.

The CM says 15 clients is too many. That they can’t cope. That we need to hire. The clients complain. The work isn’t reactive enough, not creative enough, not « them » enough.

And me? When I managed those 15 clients myself, effortlessly, they were thrilled. The feedback was excellent. The difference was that it was me. My energy, my involvement, my eye for detail.

But I can’t clone myself.

The result: revenue that pays people who do worse than me, for clients who end up disappointed anyway. The agency is a hamster on a wheel. You run, you sweat, you make noise — and you end up in exactly the same place.

COVID as a truth accelerator

Then the world stops. Government-mandated closures. Empty terraces. Takeaway-only restaurants. Ghost hotels.

A crisis doesn’t create problems — it reveals them. And what it reveals in my sector is something far deeper than a pandemic:

Fragmentation kills small businesses.

Not competition. Not lack of customers. Fragmentation. Too many tools. Too many subscriptions. Too many providers. Too many things to understand, configure, maintain. The restaurant owner who just wants to cook good food ends up managing eight different dashboards.

And the agency — my agency — is part of the problem. We’re one more tool in the stack. One more provider on the list. One more cost on the balance sheet.

The invasion of the opportunists

And as if that wasn’t enough, COVID created a massive gold rush.

The media — in France, the UK, the US — hammered for months that restaurants needed « help with their digital transition. » Delivery, click-and-collect, social media, online visibility. Every newscast, every front page. The message was clear: there’s a market to grab.

And the opportunists poured in. By the hundreds.

Self-employed freelancers who appeared out of nowhere. Young people who saw « a problem to scale. » People who couldn’t find jobs and launched solo to « manage restaurants’ social media. » Not out of conviction. Not out of expertise. Out of timing.

They charged €200/month for what we charged €379 — except they had no infrastructure, no experience, no perspective. They trashed what we did. « Too expensive. » « Not agile. » « Old school. »

We had been on the ground for five years. Five years understanding restaurant owners’ real needs. Five years breaking our teeth on actual problems. We weren’t there because of a COVID opportunity. We were there because we had seen the need before everyone else.

But try explaining that to a prospect when some kid across the table offers the same thing at half price by posting three Instagram stories a week. The market was flooded with low-cost providers who dragged prices down — and standards with them.

That’s the second reason the agency model is dead. Not just because it’s inefficient — because it became impossible to defend against free and almost-free competition.

2025–2026 — The sector collapses. The numbers are brutal.

Here’s what the hospitality sector looks like today, compared to its glowing health in 2016:

France: 9,465 insolvencies in accommodation and food services over 12 months (March 2026) — that’s +28.4% in one year. The Banque de France cites « deteriorating economic conditions » and « weakened financial positions since the end of COVID. »

United Kingdom: 3,353 hospitality businesses insolvent in 2025. Another 762 in Q1 2026. Liquidations are 45% above pre-COVID levels. British pubs: from 60,800 in 2000 to 45,000 in 2024. Brewdog closes 38 out of 49 bars. Revolution Bars collapses.

United States: 9% of full-service restaurants classified as at-risk of closure in 2026. Insolvencies up +4% across all sectors.

The problem isn’t COVID. COVID ended long ago. The problem is structural: costs are rising (energy, labour, raw materials), customers spend less, and digital tools remain fragmented and expensive. Exactly what I saw in 2016 on the ground. Except now it’s killing businesses by the thousands.

The moment of clarity

One evening — I can’t remember exactly when, but it’s the kind of moment that stays with you — I asked myself a simple question:

Why am I asking a business to pay €379/month for a human to manually do what software could do for €79/month?

Not « in theory. » Not « in five years. » Now.

The technology exists. AI exists. No-code tools exist. The only reason the agency model survives is inertia. People are used to paying someone else to do things for them. But when you show them they can do it themselves, faster, for a quarter of the price — the choice is obvious.

That’s where Komby is born. In that space between « the problem I’ve been solving for six years » and « the technology that finally allows solving it at scale. »

The transition — what it looks like in practice

Today, former Digital CHR clients are migrating to Komby:

• Before: €379/month — a human doing a mediocre job
• Now: €79/month — the Komby platform, 3 apps included, total autonomy

For those who still want a human safety net: +€150/month for assistance, no commitment.

The client saves money. They pay €229 instead of €379 with assistance. Or €79 if they want pure autonomy.

And me? I earn more per client in net margin, without payroll, without dependence on employees who do worse than me. The SaaS is locked in for 12 or 24 months. Predictable revenue. Clean margins. Real scalability.

« The agency model will never disappear »

An anecdote. The daughter of one of my clients runs a web agency. Website creation only. She tells me, looking me straight in the eye: « It’s impossible we’ll disappear. People will always want human relationships. »

I looked at her without saying a word. But here’s what I was thinking:

People have never clicked so much and called so little. They order dinner without speaking to anyone. They book a hotel at 3am in their pyjamas. They leave a Google review while waiting for the tube. They don’t want « a human relationship. » They want autonomy. Speed. Control.

What agencies call « human relationships » is middleman work. It’s time billed on tasks the client could do themselves in five minutes with the right tool.

People who deny this reality aren’t brave. They’re scared. And I understand — I ran an agency myself. But fear doesn’t change the direction of the wind. It just makes you arrive late.

Why this time is different

With radio, I was building someone else’s audience.

With Electromix, I had my catalogue — but the model remained artisanal, dependent on my personal energy.

With Digital CHR, I had my clients — but I was selling human time that didn’t scale, trapped in the hours/revenue ratio.

With Komby:

• It’s my product — every line of code, every feature
• It’s scalable — 1 client or 10,000, same infrastructure
• It’s recurring — monthly subscriptions, not one-off projects
• It’s locked in — 12-24 month commitments
• It’s impossible for an employee to copy — a CM can leave with clients, they can’t leave with the software

Six years on the ground. Six years understanding the real problems of real business owners. Not an MBA idea read in a book. A solution forged in the daily pain of customer service.

And this time — for the first time — I’m the one who keeps the lead.

This is the journal of an entrepreneur who has lived several lives. Radio, the record label, expatriation, the agency, SaaS. Each stage built the next. None was an accident.