If you are thinking about exporting to the UK, you will already be established in your home market. You will have great products and have invested in machinery to make your products. You will be looking to maximise your return on this investment. You will have local sales teams with effective marketing materials aimed at buyers and consumers in your own country or region and you will know your product’s unique selling points (USPs). If you have all this in place, then you will be ready to look at exporting to the UK.

Finding Buyers for your Products via Exporting

According to the Wall Street Journal, it is only a small minority of companies (less than 20%) that even make an attempt to export their products outside their own borders. However, by taking the correct steps, there is no reason why you need to be part of the 80% that do not export. There are buyers for your products; you just need to find them.

But as an exporter, making the first steps towards an international marketplace is difficult and potentially risky and costly. How do you make the transition from being a single country or regional company to an international company, selling in the UK?

In most cases, the lack of knowledge, skilled resources or partners in the target market is the issue. From a distance, how does an exporter get the skills, resources and contacts to locate overseas customers? How does an exporter bridge the culture differences between their home market and the UK?

How We Can Help

The answer is to contact Stoneleigh Products Limited and discuss our product agency services. Our knowledge of the markets in the UK and Europe will allow you to start an export programme in a low risk scenario, geared towards success. You avoid having the overhead costs of staff recruitment, training and salaries, office costs etc but at the same time being able to retain more control over pricing and branding by working with an experienced agency partner.

Is the economic climate a barrier to exporting? In the short term it is clearly a factor, but those companies developing a market during these times will benefit greatly when the economies of the world turn around. Right now, exporting can aid businesses in being able to clear inventories which may be a way to turn a business into profit. Also international shipping rates are at historic lows prices, this enabling the products to get to market at a very cheap cost.