About Ivory Summit Reach

The answer was not what anyone expected. That set the tone.

Ivory Summit Reach was founded in Tokyo in 2017 by Margaux Ellery, after eleven years in institutional consulting. The name came from a conversation about what good advice actually looks like: reaching the summit of a problem, not just circling it from a comfortable distance. The first client was a third-generation textile manufacturer in the Midlands that had been losing margin for four consecutive years. The work took nine weeks. The answer was not what anyone expected. That engagement set the tone for everything that followed.

The practice grew slowly and deliberately. For the first three years, Margaux took on no more than four engagements annually, preferring depth over volume. A turning point came in the winter of 2020, when two clients in adjacent industries faced the same structural question from different directions. Working through both simultaneously produced a kind of cross-pollination that neither engagement could have achieved alone. Since then, Ivory Summit Reach has maintained a small, stable network of associates, each brought in for specific expertise rather than kept on permanent staff.

Today the practice works with a range of organisations: family businesses navigating generational change, founder-led companies approaching their first institutional round, and established firms whose strategy has quietly drifted from their operations. Engagements are taken on by referral or direct approach. There is no sales process. The first conversation is always free, always candid, and always focused on whether we are actually the right fit for what you need. If we are not, we will say so and suggest who might be.