Exporting, the Missed Opportunity

Export­ing is per­haps the great­est oppor­tu­nity often missed by small busi­nesses. While small and medium busi­ness spend time focus­ing on their domes­tic mar­kets, the for­eign mar­ket is attacked by competitors.

By effec­tively ignor­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of export­ing to inter­na­tional mar­kets, busi­nesses restrict their pos­si­bil­i­ties enor­mously. The per­cep­tion of many small busi­nesses is that export­ing is open only to larger play­ers, that it’s too com­plex, too expen­sive, or there is no inter­na­tional demand. They’re usu­ally wrong on all counts.

Export­ing is per­haps one of the cheap­est ways for busi­nesses to test the waters in for­eign mar­kets. There is lit­tle expense involved, com­pared to other inter­na­tional mar­ket entry strate­gies. The risk is also some­thing which can be con­trolled effec­tively. A dis­cus­sion with your friendly com­mer­cial banker will usu­ally result in sev­eral ways to con­trol your risk.

A key ben­e­fit that export­ing has over other modes of entry is the abil­ity to use your cur­rent man­u­fac­tur­ing plant. This alle­vi­ates the need to find large amounts of cap­i­tal to set up for­eign man­u­fac­tur­ing. As time goes on, you can look toward either con­sol­i­dat­ing your man­u­fac­tur­ing in the opti­mal global loca­tion, or dis­trib­ut­ing it to sev­eral for­eign countries.

While export­ing isn’t the most dif­fi­cult game in the world, it’s not some­thing you’ll pick up on a Fri­day after­noon either. For a small busi­ness look­ing to go inter­na­tional, look to an export man­age­ment com­pany. To develop the exper­tise inter­nally for small busi­ness sales vol­umes prob­a­bly isn’t viable.

When look­ing around, choose an export man­age­ment com­pany that has expe­ri­ence in your indus­try. Remem­ber, this is the com­pany you’ll entrust to effec­tively con­trol your for­eign oper­a­tions, at least for a period of time. Choose carefully.

Con­sider this your call to action. Inves­ti­gate the pos­si­bil­i­ties of export­ing, even if you aren’t sure it’s for you. If you’re wait­ing for the world to beat a path to your door, stop wait­ing. In the global econ­omy, you need to beat your way to the cus­tomers door, wher­ever they may be.