As we discussed in our last blog^1, working with experienced freight forwarders can help alleviate the risk of expanding your business globally by ensuring your merchandise is transported safely and in accordance with international trade laws.
Of course, moving products so they arrive on time and meet all regulations is one thing, but moving products to countries they are popular in and distributing these products to the best outlets to sell them is another matter entirely.
Any knowledgeable entrepreneur knows better than to open a new store without first analyzing the location and demographic, ensuring the product or service they offer is in high demand and that consumers seeking it out will be able to easily reach it. In addition, tailoring their business model to best suit each location, while still maintaining the same standards of quality the brand is recognized for, will maximize the success of the expansion.
That level of customization may seem daunting at first, but we can assure you the effort is worthwhile, just look at how well it’s worked for McDonalds!
The Golden Arches has more than 35,000 locations spread out across over 100 countries, altering the menu and ingredients depending to ensure their food appeals to local tastes and sensibilities.
The same can be said of any business, as identifying foreign needs and devising strategies to meet their demand with local supply is the very backbone of the import export industry. But the very matter of locating such foreign markets can be quite the undertaking, to say nothing of the effort involved in coming to understand them.
What languages do they speak, what regulations do they have on outside businesses, what embargoes are they enforcing or under the enforcement of, how stable is their government, how valuable is their currency, how much of their population have disposable income to invest, how much competition would you face should you do business there, where within this country would your merchandise in highest demand, how can you go about ensuring your merchandise makes it into the widest available markets?
And once you’ve learned the answers to all these question for one country, you’ll have to start your research all over again when you expand into the next one, all the while ensuring your current operations are still running smoothly.
This is more work than any one entrepreneur could hope to do alone, and even a small or medium enterprise would have great difficulty managing it all, but anyone building a career in international trade knows that this is not a field for lone wolves.
We here at Exima know full well the importance of bringing people together to achieve what cannot be accomplished alone, which is why we connect trade specialists and market experts on our network with the verified buyers and sellers on our partner platform, Export Portal^3.
Allowing all parties to pool their talents gives professionals from every level of the ecommerce industry a trusted global trade hub where they can build partnerships and increase their output. It has never been easier for Trade Specialists intimately familiar with the ins and outs of different countries to get in contact with the buyers and sellers eager to expand their reach internationally, all thanks to Exima and Export Portal.
