C-Ways

What C-Ways does

C-Ways is a Paris-based strategic consulting firm founded in 2001 that combines data science and proprietary AI tools with senior advisory work to help enterprises anticipate consumer and market trends. The firm operates around four branded methodologies: Smart Resilient Strategy® (its core decision-making framework for uncertain environments), C-Trends & People (trend detection), C-Strategy (strategic accompaniment), and C-Data & AI (performance optimization). Its proprietary tech stack centers on Nextrends, an AI-powered trend detection engine that aspirates 245 digital sources covering 25,000 brands and 170,000 keywords across 40 countries and processes millions of weekly data points using NLP and lexical topic modeling; supporting tools include COSMO, an ELO-inspired gamified trade-off method for measuring brand initiative impact, and TrendShaker, a bi-annual French consumer panel of 2,000 respondents.

The firm serves roughly 120 active enterprise clients across seven sector specializations: agri-food, automotive & mobility, specialized distribution, luxury, financing & insurance, tourism & leisure, and home & equipment. Customer logos include LVMH, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Renault, Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Valeo, BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Danone, Nestlé, Auchan, Leroy Merlin, Galeries Lafayette, Groupama, MAIF, MACIF, and Ponant, indicating penetration of France-headquartered multinationals primarily. The business model is project-based, customized strategic consulting delivered through direct enterprise engagement, with multi-year contracts and no publicly disclosed pricing tiers. The company is privately held as a French SAS with €23,200 share capital, led by co-founder Grégoire Mialet (Président) and Eric Champarnaud (Directeur Général), with no external institutional investment referenced in available materials. C-Ways has pursued an RSE-led differentiation, eliminating business air travel in 2023, publishing its first RSE report in 2024, and earning EcoVadis Silver Medal status (72/100) and the Grand Prix Écomobilité from SNCF TGV-Intercit\u00e9s.

Name

C-Ways

Legal name

C-WAYS SAS

Website

https://c-ways.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2001

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Paris-based data science consulting firm founded in 2001 that delivers predictive marketing, trend detection, strategic foresight, and loyalty optimization to roughly 120 enterprise clients across luxury, automotive, financial services, retail, and food & beverage using proprietary AI tools.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Strategic Management Consulting

NAICS

Marketing Consulting Services (541613), Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling (541910), Management Consulting Services (54161)

SIC

Services-Management Consulting Services (8742)

akta.pro primary industry

Customer Experience (CX) & Voice of Customer (NPS/CSAT, Journey Research) (MPAAALAH)

akta.pro secondary industry

Pricing, Revenue & Commercial Analytics (BPAHALAM)

Keywords

• Strategic consulting services
• Consumer trend analysis
• Predictive marketing analytics
• Data-driven strategy
• Market intelligence consulting

Headquarters

HQ city

Paris

HQ country

France

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Strategic Consulting Services: C-Ways provides consulting engagements to administrations and leading companies across mobility, fashion, luxury, financial services, sports, and consumer goods sectors. The firm offers data-driven strategic advisory services including consumer behavior analysis, trend detection, strategic foresight, and performance optimization.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

C-Ways is a Paris-based consulting firm that sells data-driven strategic advisory services — including consumer behavior analysis, trend detection, predictive marketing, and resilient strategy development — to enterprise clients across automotive, luxury, retail, food & beverage, financial services, insurance, tourism and hospitality sectors. Service delivery is anchored on proprietary tools and methodologies: the Nextrends AI-powered trend detection engine, the TrendShaker consumer panel, the COSMO customer-experience quantification method, and the Smart Resilient Strategy® framework. Engagement fees are charged on a customized, project-based basis.

Product overview

C-Ways is a strategic consulting firm specializing in data-driven resilient strategies for businesses. The company operates a platform-plus-services model combining proprietary AI tools with consulting methodologies. Its core offerings include Smart Resilient Strategy® (core methodology), C-Trends & People (trend analysis), C-Strategy (strategic consulting), and C-Data & AI (data science services). The product portfolio features proprietary AI tools: Nextrends for real-time trend detection across 40 countries, COSMO for customer experience quantification, and TrendShaker for continuous consumer behavior tracking. Research studies like Nextcar provide sector-specific insights. All offerings are delivered through expert consultants who interpret and apply the data science outputs.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Nextrends: Proprietary AI-powered trend detection tool that aspirates and analyzes data from search engines, social networks, and reference websites across multiple sectors internationally.
• TrendShaker
• COSMO
• Smart Resilient Strategy
• C-Trends & People
• C-Strategy
• C-Data & AI

Products and services

• Smart Resilient Strategy® C-Ways' flagship consulting methodology, combining data analysis, scenario planning and strategic advisory to help organizations anticipate and build resilient strategies in uncertain environments. Sold as part of C-Ways' C-Strategy and broader engagement portfolio to enterprise clients.
• C-Trends & People Service offering analyzing consumer behavior and trend detection by exploiting the firm's data capabilities to detect weak signals and identify tomorrow's trends in ultra-competitive contexts.
• C-Strategy Strategic consulting service helping organizations anticipate the unpredictable by integrating resilience dimensions, leveraging consultant expertise with C-Ways' data collection, cross-referencing and analysis capabilities.
• C-Data & AI Performance optimization service applying a scientific approach to data using AI resources for faster and more efficient data processing, with a mathematical culture to avoid biased interpretations and master model explainability.
• Nextrends Proprietary AI-powered trend detection tool aspirating, structuring and analyzing real-time data from search engines, social networks and reference websites to provide market forecasts and consumption-trend analysis. Covers 245 sources, 25,000 brands, 170,000 keywords across 40 countries including local-language sources in China, Japan and Korea.
• COSMO (Customer-Oriented and Sustainable Marketing Operations) Proprietary analytical method that quantifies the impact of brand initiatives on customer experience using a gamified trade-off methodology inspired by ELO scoring, identifying strategic transformation levers linking sustainability and marketing performance.
• Nextcar Annual automotive purchase-journey analysis study examining the digitalization of automotive purchasing, consumer expectations, needs and trade-offs throughout the car-buying process across new and used vehicle segments.
• TrendShaker Proprietary consumer-behavior tracking device conducting exclusive surveys twice yearly with 2,000 representative respondents on French consumption habits, providing in-depth analysis of emerging trends, weak signals and economic and sectoral forecasts.

Quantifiable outcome

• Client retention improved with comprehensive customer ecosystem deployed within months
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers21 records

Segments8 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability7 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Six partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• Harris InteractivecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2020Partnership with Harris Interactive for the Nextcar automotive study, conducting surveys with over 10,000 consumers across 15 countries. C-Ways and Harris Interactive jointly construct composite indicators for evaluating automotive usage patterns.
• The Shift ProjectcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPro-bono partnership where C-Ways contributes skills to The Shift Project's 'Eating in 2050' initiative, applying its expertise in foresight and survey systems to identify behavioral change factors and quantify 4 scenarios of eating behaviors in 2050.
• ADEME (Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Énergie)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartnership for the 2025 National Carpooling Survey to better understand carpooling users and their practices, including evaluation of environmental impact from avoided greenhouse gas emissions.
• IDDRI (Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCollaboration on mobility studies and sustainable development research. IDDRI and C-Ways worked together on the social leasing initiative for electric vehicles.
• T&E (Transport & Environment)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartnership on social leasing analysis and policy recommendations for electric vehicles. T&E and IDDRI defined a detailed action plan for ambitious social leasing with 900,000 modest households.
• Bleu-Blanc-CœurminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerC-Ways participated in a round table at the International Agricultural Show organized by Bleu-Blanc-Cœur on the topic of health as a lever for environmental transition.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Ipsos: Paris-headquartered global market research and consumer insights firm with extensive luxury, automotive, and financial-services client overlap. Directly comparable as a French-rooted research and advisory player serving the same enterprise verticals as C-Ways.
• Kantar: Global consumer research, insights, and consulting firm with strong FMCG and luxury practices. Closely comparable on consumer-behaviour analytics, brand and customer-experience measurement, and data-led strategic advisory.
• NielsenIQ: Consumer intelligence and market measurement firm providing data, analytics, and trend insights to retailers and consumer goods manufacturers. Compares directly to C-Ways on consumption-trend detection and predictive consumer analytics for the same customer segments.
• Ekimetrics: Paris-based AI and advanced analytics consulting firm delivering marketing-mix optimization, customer analytics, and data strategy for large enterprise clients. Comparable on AI-augmented consulting and outcome-driven engagements across luxury, retail, and financial services.
• Kea & Company: French-origin boutique strategy and marketing consulting firm focused on brand, growth, and customer experience transformation. Comparable as a similarly sized Paris-based consultancy competing for marquee French enterprise engagements.

Broad incumbents

• McKinsey & Company: Largest global management consultancy with deep consumer, automotive, and financial-services practices. Competes with C-Ways for strategic advisory mandates but at vastly greater scale and resource depth.
• Boston Consulting Group (BCG): Global strategy consultancy with industry-leading marketing, pricing, and analytics practices. Overlaps with C-Ways on consumer-strategy and predictive-analytics engagements as a much larger, broader incumbent.
• Bain & Company: Global management consultancy with strong consumer products, retail, and financial-services capabilities. Competes for the same brand-and-strategy budgets C-Ways serves, particularly with luxury and automotive clients.
• BearingPoint: European-headquartered management and technology consultancy with strong French and European enterprise client base. Comparable as a regional incumbent operating across strategy, data, and transformation mandates.

Emerging players

• Antidox: Paris-based foresight and trend research consultancy focused on emerging innovation signals and consumer futures. Closely mirrors C-Ways' trend-detection and strategy-foresight positioning at smaller scale.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• YouTubeyoutube.com/@c-ways
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/c-ways
• Xx.com/cways_fr

Compliance2 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles8 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about C-Ways