Are you ready to export?

Exporting can have a great effect on your business, helping to extend your market, boost your turnover and prevent you having too great a dependence on your UK-based customers. But it isn’t always an easy option. Starting to export poses a whole new set of challenges.

A planned approach helps you to identify the best opportunities. It ensures that you understand what’s involved, and have the resources and skills you need.

Can you rise to the challenge?

Exporting isn’t simply an add-on to your existing business. It should be part of an overall strategy to develop the business.

Before you start exporting, it’s worth making sure you’ve developed a complete export plan looking at all the costs and risks involved:

Exporting presents all the normal challenges of marketing in the UK – it’s up to you to find customers and convince them to buy from you. Understanding what customers want and how the market operates is vital. It will also involve additional costs, and you may find you simply can’t compete with local suppliers. But if you’ve got a good product to offer and a well-run business, the chances are there are opportunities out there for you.

Do you have the skills and resources for exporting?

To start exporting successfully, you should take a planned approach and decide what your export strategy is. You need to spend time and money planning, researching market opportunities and building relationships. You may also need to invest in modifying your product and service to suit overseas customers.

Exporting is usually a way of growing a successful business, rather than an easy way out for one that’s in trouble. If you’re struggling with limited finances or overworked employees, you may not have the resources to take on the extra work. 

Once you’ve planned your exporting activities, you also need to devote extra resources to handling your exporting business. Marketing to overseas customers tends to be more demanding than selling within the UK.

Exporting can also be financially demanding. Customers often want credit from the time they receive the goods. For a long distance shipment, this could be weeks after you produced and shipped the goods, so you get paid later than you would by a customer in the UK. At the same time, you may have to meet extra costs like transport and insurance.

The more successful you are, the greater the demands placed on your business will be. Plan ahead to be sure you have the capacity to handle the extra production, selling and after-sales support.

By Martin Huckle