Group website for a holding company: how to make 20 subsidiaries look like one brand

A group website has one job that a normal company website does not: it has to make many companies read as one organisation, without flattening what each of them does. Get it right and a partner, an investor or a new hire understands the whole group in one visit. Get it wrong and you have twenty logos, twenty tones of voice and a homepage that looks like a directory.

This is the guide we wish we had before building one for a group with more than twenty companies. It covers what a group site needs, what it costs, and the part nobody budgets for: keeping the brand consistent after launch.

Why holding companies end up with a website problem

Groups grow by acquisition and by spinning things out. Every new company arrives with its own logo, its own colours and a website someone built in a hurry. Nobody decides that the brand should fragment. It just does, one subsidiary at a time.

The cost shows up in three places:

• Trust. A client of one subsidiary looks up the parent and finds a site that does not mention it, or mentions it with a logo that does not match the one they know. Inconsistency reads as unreliability, even when the business behind it is solid.
• Time. Marketing, legal and HR keep asking each other for the current logo, the current wording, the current procedure. The answer lives in someone’s inbox.
• Deals. In B2B negotiations and investor conversations, a group that cannot present itself as one entity gives away leverage it actually has.

What a group website needs to do

Strip away the decoration and a group site is three things layered on top of each other.

1. One story, told once

The homepage explains what the group is for, in the language of the people it wants to reach. Not a list of companies. A reason those companies exist together. Every subsidiary page then inherits that reason, so a visitor who lands on a company page still understands the whole.

2. A page per company that stands on its own

Each subsidiary gets a page that could be its website if it had to be: what it does, who it serves, proof, contact. Built from the same components, so it looks like a sibling and not a cousin. This is where most of the content work sits, and it is the reason the number of companies matters for the timeline.

3. A brand hub behind the public site

This is the part that changes how the group operates. A private area where every company’s logos, colours, templates, documents and procedures live in one place, always current. Legal finds the latest terms there. A new hire finds the onboarding pack there. Marketing stops chasing files.

What it costs and how long it takes

The Launch solution covers the identity, the site and the hub. The range depends on the number of companies and on how much of their content already exists in a usable form. Timelines assume the group can nominate one person per subsidiary to sign off their page.

Scope	Typical range	Timeline
Group identity refresh, homepage and up to 10 company pages	€8k to €12k (about £7k to £10k, $9k to $13k)	3 to 4 weeks
Above plus a private brand and procedures hub	€12k to €16k (about £10k to £14k, $13k to $17k)	4 to 6 weeks
20 to 30 companies, hub, multilingual	€16k to €20k (about £14k to £17k, $17k to $22k)	6 to 8 weeks

Two things move the price more than anything else: whether the subsidiaries have usable copy and imagery, and whether the group needs the site in more than one language. Neither is a reason to wait. Both are reasons to start with the shared system and add pages as content arrives.

Case study: Twelve

Twelve is an event management group with more than two decades of events behind it and over twenty companies under one parent. The public problem was a website that presented the group’s experience without presenting the group. The private problem was that twenty companies were keeping their own versions of the brand.

We built the identity, a group website with a page per company, and a brand and procedures hub used across every subsidiary. The site is the front door. The hub is where the group actually lives day to day.

• +90% brand recognition: internal and external stakeholders identify the parent brand behind each company
• +75% operational alignment: teams from legal to marketing onboard and collaborate from one source
• +120% stakeholder clarity: one authoritative presentation of the group in negotiations with investors, clients and institutions

“Twenty companies, one brand, one place to keep it all straight. What used to be a monthly headache of chasing logos and documents just works now. We look like one group because we finally operate like one.”

Andrei R, Founder @ Twelve

What to prepare before you start

You do not need everything ready. You need these four things, and a group that has them launches in half the time.

• A list of companies with one owner each. The person who signs off their page.
• The current logos, in whatever state. Part of the job is deciding which ones survive.
• The two or three documents everyone keeps asking for. Those go in the hub first.
• A decision on languages. One is fine. Adding a second later is fine. Deciding halfway through is expensive.

Ready to look like one group?

If your holding has outgrown its website, tell us how many companies you have and what keeps getting lost. We will come back with a scope and a number within one business day, and we will say so if a group site is not the right first move.