When looking to develop a Global strategy, one of the key aspects to success is to really understand the ‘local’ markets you are looking to work in. We refer to this as “Think Global, Act Local”

 

As a business, once you have made the decision to go Global, then you really need to undertake a SWOT of your own business and consider how that translates in other markets. Just because you have excellent sales of a particular product or sku in your home market, doesn’t necessarily mean that this will be the case when you move into other territories. There are so many factors that can affect this, including local competitors that are not Global, but strong in an individual market.

 

A great example of how markets differ is shown in the adoption of the interactive whiteboard. In the UK, under the Labour government in the mid-2000s, huge amounts of money were allocated to education and so there was a massive boom in the UK over a fairly short period of time. However, this did not happen in every market. Knowing when and where to launch a product across the EMEA and Globally can be key to your success.

 

The US is, for many, the Holy Grail in business, simply because the sheer size and scale of projects that occur there. The US also develops a lot of cutting-edge technology, but we have often found that the technology rolls out earlier in Europe, due to demand and the sheer scale of a project/investment in the US.

 

This has advantages and disadvantages to brands. In some ways, it allows brands to ‘test their products and go to market strategies with less risk, however if the project needs to be aggressively priced, then of course scale is essential.

 

When approaching the US, it is essential you get your plan right. The rewards can be huge, but so can the failure, and we have all seen successful European brands that took that step into the US and then fell flat on their face, losing large sums of money. Vice versa, we have also seen many a US brand that did not understand Europe and saw it simply as ‘one market’.

 

Your first step to Global success is with quality market intelligence. It is easy enough to get data to do this. However, what that data doesn’t show is just how much work the distributor had to do to sell the products. Many brands go and win their own business themselves and then simply choose to fulfil the projects via a low-cost distributor or 3PL. If the consultants you are using don’t fully understand how the deals have been put together, then it might mean a brand signs with a fantastic logistical operator, but one that adds no value or sells anything themselves.

 

At Re-Sauce, we know virtually every brand, every distributor and every major integrator locally and globally. We are, therefore, able to add some real understanding of the data available and why certain projects were put through the different distributors or channels.

 

If you want to know more about how to launch Globally with real local knowledge, not just data, talk to the Pro-AV experts hello@re-sauce.net