The subsidiary built its own site because the group site did not serve it.
Local affiliate websites for the subsidiaries and sales organisations of an industrial group, built so each market gets the range, the language and the local commercial detail it needs while staying inside one platform, one product source and one set of brand components.
A subsidiary builds its own site because the group site lists references it cannot supply, omits the ones it can, routes enquiries to the wrong entity, or takes months to publish a local campaign. Each is a legitimate operating need, and treating the resulting site as non-compliance rather than as evidence of a gap tends to make the position worse.
Across most groups the list is consistent: the local product range with local availability and approvals, local contact and enquiry routing, local case material and references, events and campaigns on a local timetable, and language that fits how the market speaks rather than a literal translation of headquarters copy.
Product specifications, document sources, brand components, legal and privacy content and the underlying platform stay with the group. That boundary is what makes local autonomy affordable: a market can publish freely within a framework whose correctness is maintained once rather than negotiated in every country.
An independent local site carries recurring costs that are easy to overlook: its own maintenance and security, its own accessibility and consent position, authority built separately from the group domain, and a standing risk of publishing product claims that headquarters has since revised. Those costs continue long after the initial build.
Markets served by a distributor rather than a subsidiary need a deliberate decision. A distributor publishing your product content on a domain you do not control competes with you, cannot be corrected when specifications change, and may continue after the relationship ends. Supplying content through a controlled feed is usually the better arrangement.
A local site model on the shared platform, the permission structure behind it, market-aware product and document presentation, enquiry routing, and a migration route for existing independent sites. See WordPress Multisite for the platform pattern this usually runs on.
Code Industrial is the industrial B2B practice of Code Barcelona, an agency building corporate websites and digital platforms since 2015. The same strategy, design and engineering team works on every industrial project, from the first scoping session through to life after launch.
The reason a market goes its own way differs by structure. Local affiliate websites are designed around it.
What industrial groups ask when subsidiaries and sales organisations need their own sites.
Market-level sites for a subsidiary, national sales organisation or acquired company, presenting the local range, local approvals, local contacts and local campaigns. The workable version runs on the group platform and draws product and document data from one source, so the market controls its commercial content while specifications stay consistent everywhere.
Usually a section of the group domain serves better, because authority accumulates in one place and there is one platform to maintain. A separate domain can be justified where the entity trades under a different name, where an acquisition carries real local recognition, or where a legal structure requires it. The cost is building and maintaining that authority separately.
Enough to run their market without a central request: campaign and landing pages, local cases and references, events, contacts and enquiry routing, and translation nuance. Product specifications, documents, brand components and legal content are better held centrally, since those are the areas where a local variation becomes a correctness problem rather than a preference.
Start by establishing why. In most cases it addresses a real gap, such as a range the group catalogue does not carry or a publishing route that was too slow. Closing that gap on the shared platform gives the market a reason to move. Treating the site purely as a governance breach tends to drive the next one further out of view.
Decide it deliberately rather than letting it settle by default. A distributor publishing your product content on their own domain competes with you for your own terms, cannot be corrected when specifications change, and may persist after the relationship ends. Supplying content through a controlled feed, or hosting a market page that routes to them, keeps the material current and under your control.
Handled properly it usually improves it, since signals consolidate onto one domain rather than accumulating separately on several. The risk sits in the execution: each local site needs its own inventory and page-level redirect mapping, and region targeting has to be re-declared as each market joins. See SEO migration.
Yes, and they should. Availability, approvals and certifications are attributes on the product record rather than separate pages per market, so a market displays what it can supply and no more. That also prevents the common failure where a global product page generates enquiries in countries that cannot fulfil them.
By making the shared route easier than the alternative, and by defining who decides what. A component library markets can compose from, product data they cannot accidentally contradict, a clear escalation path when a market needs something the platform lacks, and a periodic review of the estate. See website governance.
Local site work usually sits alongside these.
Subsidiaries running their own sites, or markets the group platform does not serve. Tell us how your markets are organised and we will tell you how we would approach the local affiliate websites work.