Joe and The Juice. citizenM. Lululemon. WeTransfer. Steve Maggi Helped Bring Them All to the U.S.

When a multinational company decides to expand into the United States, the business plan gets all the attention. The real estate team scouts locations. The marketing team builds the launch campaign. The PR team prepares the press releases.

But there’s a critical piece that rarely makes the headlines—and without it, none of the rest happens: getting the right people into the country to make it all work.

That’s where I come in.

Over the course of my career, I’ve had the privilege of masterminding and executing U.S. entry immigration strategies for some of the most exciting global brands of the last two decades. Four of them you know very well:

Joe and The Juice

Recently, I stood at the entrance to Joe & The Juice’s U.S. flagship store at 67 Spring Street in New York City. I stood there for a moment—not just as a visitor, but as someone who remembers exactly what that address meant about ten years ago.

That’s where I met with the company’s Global HR Director and made my pitch to let me mastermind their entire U.S. immigration strategy.

At the time, they had been working with another firm that was employing a losing strategy. Cases were being denied left and right, stunting their ability to grow past that single flagship location. A Danish brand with a global vision was being held hostage by bad immigration counsel—and it showed.

I changed that.

Over the years that followed, I successfully transferred dozens of employees from over 10 countries into the United States, secured an L-1 blanket petition that gave the company the flexibility to scale their U.S. operations rapidly, and helped put all their managers and executives in place across the country.

Seven years later, they had gone from one store to approximately 60 U.S. locations.

Eventually, as all companies that grow past 500 employees do, they took their immigration operations in-house. But every time I walk past a Joe & The Juice location anywhere in the United States—and there are now 500+ locations globally with 100 more American stores planned in the next 18 months—I know that I was partially responsible for making that happen.

And that always makes me smile.

citizenM

The Netherlands-based hotel brand that revolutionized hospitality—self-check-in kiosks, museum-quality art, affordable luxury—needed to do more than find the right real estate when it set its sights on the U.S. market. It needed to bring its people: the architects of its culture, the leaders who understood its vision, the team that would ensure every American property delivered the same disruptive experience that made citizenM a global phenomenon.

That’s where immigration strategy became brand strategy.

Today, citizenM operates 37 hotels globally, was acquired by Marriott International for $355 million in 2025, and has become the gold standard for lifestyle hospitality. Its U.S. presence—with properties in New York, Boston, Miami, Washington D.C., Seattle, Los Angeles, and more—is central to its success.

The right people got the right visas. The rest is hospitality history.

Lululemon

Before Lululemon became a $50+ billion global athletic wear empire, it was a Canadian brand with ambitious plans to conquer American retail. Moving Canadian executives and key personnel across the border requires navigating specific treaty provisions, L-1 intracompany transfers, and a host of considerations that many immigration attorneys overlook.

Today, Lululemon is one of the most valuable apparel brands in the world with hundreds of U.S. locations and a fiercely loyal American customer base. Their flagship stores didn’t launch themselves.

WeTransfer

The Amsterdam-based file-sharing platform that changed how creative professionals share work globally needed a U.S. presence to compete on the world stage. Bringing Dutch tech talent, leadership, and creative teams into the American market required precise immigration execution—the kind where a single misstep can delay launches, disrupt operations, and cost millions.

WeTransfer successfully established its U.S. operations and has grown into one of the world’s most widely used creative platforms, trusted by 87+ million users globally.

What These Four Companies Have in Common—Beyond Steve Maggi

Joe and The Juice. citizenM. Lululemon. WeTransfer.

Three countries. Four industries. Four completely different business models. But the same challenge: getting the right people into the United States at the right time to execute a successful American launch.

And the same solution: a comprehensive, strategically designed U.S. immigration plan built specifically around the business’s needs, timeline, and growth objectives.

This is what I do—and have done for over two decades.

It’s not just about filing forms. It’s about understanding the business well enough to identify which visa categories apply, which treaty provisions are advantageous, how to structure the corporate entity to maximize immigration options, and how to sequence the entire process so that immigration never becomes the bottleneck that delays a market launch.

The Joe & The Juice Lesson: Bad Immigration Counsel Costs More Than You Think

The Joe & The Juice story carries a warning that every multinational company should hear.

When I met their Global HR Director at 67 Spring Street, they weren’t starting from scratch. They were starting over. A previous firm had been filing cases with a fundamentally flawed strategy. Denials were piling up. Key personnel couldn’t get into the country. The flagship store existed, but expansion was frozen because the people needed to drive that expansion couldn’t legally work in the United States.

Bad immigration counsel doesn’t just cost legal fees. It costs market share, launch timelines, competitive advantage, and in some cases, the entire U.S. expansion opportunity.

The difference between a firm that files forms and a firm that builds strategy is the difference between one store and sixty.

The Right People at the Right Time: Why Business Immigration Strategy Matters

Here’s what most companies don’t understand until it’s too late:

Immigration is not a back-office function. It is a strategic business lever that directly impacts your ability to execute in the U.S. market.

The wrong visa category means your key executive can’t make decisions on the ground. The wrong corporate structure means your intracompany transfer doesn’t qualify. The wrong timeline means your flagship store opens without the people who built the brand. The wrong attorney means months of delays, RFEs, and denials that push your entire U.S. launch off schedule.

When Joe and The Juice wanted to expand beyond their first U.S. location, they didn’t just need more juice bars—they needed their Juicer culture, their people, their energy, transferred from Denmark and a dozen other countries into American stores. That required getting the right visa strategy, the right blanket petition, and the right execution.

When citizenM wanted to bring their revolutionary hotel concept to New York, they didn’t just need a building—they needed the architects of their guest experience, their technology, their culture. That required precise L-1 and O-1 strategies for key personnel.

The brand doesn’t cross the border. The people do. And getting the people across the border is everything.

What This Means for You

If you’re a multinational company considering U.S. expansion, you’re probably already thinking about real estate, marketing, and hiring. Immigration is likely somewhere on the list—but probably not at the top.

It should be.

The companies that execute U.S. market entry most successfully are the ones that treat immigration strategy as a day-one priority—not an afterthought.

If Joe and The Juice, citizenM, Lululemon, and WeTransfer trusted their U.S. immigration strategy to SMA Immigration Law Firm, what does that tell you about what’s possible when you get it right?

Whether you’re a European brand looking at your first U.S. flagship, a Canadian company ready to scale south of the border, or a global tech company establishing U.S. operations, the question isn’t whether you need an immigration strategy.

The question is whether you have the right attorney to build it.

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About Steve Maggi

Steve Maggi is a nationally recognized immigration attorney with SMA Immigration Law Firm in St. Petersburg, Florida. With over two decades of experience in business immigration, corporate visa strategy, and multinational market entry, he has successfully guided some of the world’s most recognized global brands through the complex process of U.S. expansion—from flagship launches to full-scale national rollouts. When the stakes are highest and the timeline is tightest, global companies trust Steve Maggi to get their people into America.