Export & Expand: 8 essential steps to take your business global

By Rupert Sutton

Export and Expand covers the 8 essential steps in expanding your business globally. It starts by prioritising export markets; deciding which consumers, shoppers and trade customers to target; researching and contacting the right Go-to-Market partners; product development and branding; building an export team; selling and negotiati

• Language: English
• Publisher: Weben Partners
• Release date: Dec 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781838530617

Rupert Sutton

Rupert Sutton is a management consultant and entrepreneur who has spent his career in the consumer products industry helping clients enter and expand into new markets across Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. He was previously a senior executive with Nestle.

Book preview

Introduction

I was brought up in Norfolk, England, one of the country’s quieter counties, but always had a longing for travel and exploration.

As a child, I was lucky to travel to South Africa twice and in one memorable trip drove from Durban, North through Swaziland to spend five days in the Kruger Park finding, watching and learning about game; the hunters and the hunted; the watering holes, the lookout points; the importance of research; the imperative of patience.

I also had a French pen pal with whom I would spend two weeks every summer, alternating between Brittany and Norfolk. My pen pal’s family did not speak English and having been steeped in schoolboy grammar, I quickly learnt to speak the language. More importantly I also developed insights into another society: how people lived, shopped, culinary habits; their differing taste preferences, their beliefs and values; their attitudes and perceptions.

Then I went to University in Scotland to read Economics. Scotland was at first more foreign and alien than my experiences in South Africa and France. The language was the supposedly the same but it wasn’t, the people were fiercely proud of their history and heritage; and the scenery was a complete contrast to East Anglia. Initially it made me more English but after four years I’d learnt to appreciate its values and charms.

During my University holidays, I worked overseas. Once as a windsurfing and sailing instructor in the South of France and once in San Francisco as a rickshaw driver on a visa exchange programme. The latter was unforgettable introduction to the American dream, I rented the rickshaw every day and it was down to my own sales and marketing skills whether I would feast or starve at night. I learnt how to spot potential buyers, became smooth in my elevator sales pitch and learnt enough about the city to get repeat customers. I left with enough profits to buy a car on my return to the UK.

When it came time to graduate, I knew I wanted to work overseas and set about finding a suitable employer. I was fortunate enough to join Nestlé UK on the graduate trainee programme working in market research. The choice to start in research, rather than the sexier Marketing department was driven by a work experience in the City of London with an illustrious pension fund company. It was fascinating but after a period of soul searching, I decided I wanted to design, create, launch and market more tangible products than money, beliefs I still hold today.

Nestlé knew of my desire to work overseas and dangled a carrot of opportunity, but only if I developed appropriate skills and experience in the UK. So, I started in market research before moving to Key Account Management, followed by a brand manager role in a bankrupt ice cream company Nestlé acquired. I was one of a small group of managers parachuted in literally overnight to put things right. The work was challenging, thrilling and the competition was intense. We dramatically grew the top line with a series of aggressive product launches, rebranding exercises, visual identity initiatives and important behind the scenes work on projects like sales forecasting; all critical in a category where a few sunny days could triple sales.

It was at this point that I was suddenly asked to go to Japan to set up an ice cream project with the country’s leading convenience store retailer.

I had never been to Asia before.

I stayed eleven years with Nestlé in Asia. In this time, I launched ice cream businesses in Japan and Malaysia and ran a super premium pet care unit. I spent countless hours with sales teams finding and working with distributors and retailers; brainstormed with consumers on new concepts; developed, tested and launched new products; managed a currency crisis that saw raw material costs dramatically increase; set up advertising and direct marketing programmes and learnt how to respond to competitive activity no one had anticipated.

I also learnt to speak Japanese, studying every night after work and practising with whoever was patient enough to hear my stumbling, erratic sentences. Today I am able to conduct meetings and workshops in the language that has become enormously advantageous personally and a decisive factor in winning business.

Learning new languages is more than communicating with customers. As we shall see, it is about understanding and breathing different cultures and values that are a prerequisite in understanding consumer needs and habits, the heart of a successful consumer business.

In 2006, I was asked to relocate back to Europe, but my heart was in Asia, so I left salaried corporate life and became a marketing consultant in Singapore.

Initially I worked with two SMEs, one a pet retail client from Nestlé days, the other a sake brewery. Both clients needed help expanding internationally; both were long on ambition and short on practical knowledge, experience and contacts.

My sake work lasted nearly four years. It involved launching into new markets, anglicising labels and advertising plus developing new products. We found new ways to enter seemingly crowded categories and broke many norms to elbow our way into the market share charts.

My client list grew.

International expansion, launching into new geographies; starting new categories with the latest brands; finding new customers became my focus and my forte. And I consulted for both the largest MNCs, Governments and also many smaller SMEs from Japan, SE Asia and Europe. Assignments have ranged from turning around a struggling cosmetics business in China, market entry for food businesses in the Middle East, channel expansion in Vietnam and Halal product development.

Essentially my approach is to understand the key dynamics of the market through dialogue, insights and observations from consumers, shoppers, customers and competitors. Second to design a strong strategy. And third is to build capability. It is based upon these experiences that I have written Export and Expand.

Clients value practical insight. To fast track progress and circumvent obstacles, they need injections of real-life experience gleaned from growing brands and businesses in diverse markets and cultures.

Export and Expand is not an academic study. It has a distinct Asian bias since this is where I have spent most of my working life. However, I am confident its logic and principles are applicable globally.

Who is the book written for?

Firstly, for companies and individuals, who are looking to grow their businesses internationally, enter a new product category or launch a new brand portfolio. It is for firms wanting cost effective expansion, spending limited budgets wisely, or indeed export start-ups operating on a shoestring. All the companies I have worked for, including the biggest MNCs, have financial restraints. Certainly, scale varies but all my clients have been anxious to get more and spend less. And this is becoming ever more prevalent.

Secondly the book targets companies and organisations that are supporting exporters. This ranges from financial institutions like banks or insurance companies to Government bodies like export development agencies. I have worked with all of the above in finding and supporting export initiatives.

The support Governments offer to exporters varies enormously. The best offer tailored advice, coaching, export development programmes, 1-to-1 networking in market, executive educational support plus access to finance.

At the other end of the scale - which predominates - many Government agencies still cling to the 1980s model of the annual trade show, a national pavilion and an ageing list of generic trade contacts. The luckier companies may get a reduced airfare subsidy thrown in.

Thirdly Export and Expand is for students and academics looking to enter the business world, seeking practical perspectives and looking for new insights beyond work placements, course textbooks and lectures.

The Export Roadmap

To build an export business it’s important to have a plan. The roadmap is the way to make that plan.

Export in the context of this book means selling and marketing goods and services internationally. Export is used in the broadest sense, it does not simply mean companies shipping goods to far away markets; it includes actively managing and promoting business in new countries, including setting up subsidiaries or hiring local staff.

The roadmap has eight stages.

The first is where to export. Deciding where to go is based on an objective assessment of business opportunities plus the exporter’s capabilities. Where to export is chapter one.

The second chapter is who to target. This considers which consumer, shopper, or trade customer groups should be the highest priority.

The third chapter is which Go-to-Market strategy achieves competitive advantage for an exporter.

The fourth chapter discusses when and how to adjust and develop product and branding for export.

The fifth chapter looks at business organisation, trade finance, documentation and risk management.

The sixth chapter covers effective export sales and negotiation.

The seventh chapter looks at the in-market activities to drive consumer and shopper trial and repeat sale.

The eighth chapter is an export business plan, the final stage of the roadmap.

The book concludes with a summary, the five secrets of export expansion.

All businesses use industry specific definitions, jargon and slang. Consumer products are no exception so there is a detailed glossary at the end.

Chapter 1: Where to export?

The reasons why companies export vary. They include extra revenue, extension of product life cycles, improve corporate image, help the firm innovate, protect business against domestic market downturns, sell additional inventory or strengthen competitiveness.

For some businesses it is an opportunistic adventure, an exciting journey, a feeling it is the right thing to do.

One of my first consulting clients needed to grow his export business because the whole domestic category was declining rapidly. He was a regional producer, not a famous national brand and without new markets overseas, his business prospects were bleak. A clear financial imperative existed. But he also wanted to show domestic customers that an international clientele, especially upmarket hotels, restaurants and gourmet retailers appreciated his brands. He was convinced that by exporting, his domestic business would benefit from his overseas ventures. Certainly, his blossoming exports to Europe enabled him to get significant publicity in domestic newspapers that bestowed kudos and notoriety in the local business community, accolades that were at least as important as the financials.

For most exporters their objective is to find profitable and lasting revenue streams, quickly and with as little investment as possible.

Hence selecting where to go is a critical strategic decision. It’s true some markets are easier to enter than others.

Exporting becomes complicated when you have to make significant changes to business model, product range or brand names. For new exporters especially, it’s easier to start with countries where few changes are needed.

Easier Markets

A French colleague once recited a proverb that I recollect as, you’ll have a breakdown if you change your house, job and wife at the same time, the most you can change simultaneously is two of the three!

Putting aside what this tells us about French culture, I’ve found a parallel logic applies to export. If you have to change your business model, your product range and