Successful international expansion benefits companies with increased profitability and longevity, including in their domestic markets. However, according to research conducted by McKinsey, for every successful market entry, about four fail. It is not just inexperienced start-ups that suffer, many sophisticated corporations miscalculate international market entry. Trade Horizons was established to support companies to achieve global growth objectives, which may include financial (revenue and / or cost), clients, seasonality levelling, diversification, talent, suppliers, and competitive positioning.
No Single Answer
There are two major factors that make the market entry domain both confusing and ‘noisy’ for any firm looking to undertake growth in foreign markets. First and foremost is that no two companies are identical; be that in size, ambition, resources or competitive position. Then, there are myriad of potential options available, such as selecting a destination country, deciding a market entry mode (from passive export through to M&A) and timeframes. These factors contribute to the uniqueness of each company’s optimum solution. In addition, the number of organisations offering solutions and encouragement is vast and often tinted with the offering organisation’s purpose and / or specific expertise.
Trade Horizons is a specialist market entry company. As such, the Trade Horizons objective is to help companies discover their own unique formula. The team has extensive experience working with many companies across the globe, distilled into a unique process, applicable across industries and company size:
The Journey
The Trade Horizons internationalisation journey increases a company’s chances of success by reducing cost, shortening timelines, and mitigating common obstacles.
The framework has been developed into an online knowledge resource, The Global Growth Gateway. Trade Horizons partners with other market entry players to provide this resource to remove the ‘noise’ and educate companies. First is to understand the process and what it entails. Second is to be able to engage at a pace and to a level of detail that is self-selected. Trade Horizons partners with ‘encouragers,’ for example government agencies, professional membership organisations and portfolio owners. They are also ‘enablers’ with specific expertise in one of the many potential components in the process, such as legal, immigration, logistics, culture, tax, marketing, sales, company secretarial etc.
The success rate of internationalisation can be significantly improved by harnessing the enthusiasm and reach of the ‘encouragers’ to test and educate firms on the process, while involving the required ‘enabler’ expertise at the right time and in the right sequence.
Global Growth Gateway
Trade Horizons Global Growth Gateway (G3) walks through the logical, sequential progression: from Strategy & Capabilities to Country Selection & Market Entry Planning, through to Country Go Live and Execution of the plan to achieve a sustainable commercial success. Each of the phases have their own challenges and insight, which is explained in the Gateway. This allows a company considering expansion to develop its own unique journey and progress into subsequent phases. As companies work through the different levels of detail and insight, help and further resources including analysis, frameworks, diagnostics, and checklists are available. This allows ‘make’ or ‘buy’ decisions, and frames meaningful conversations with enabling partners.
Trade Horizons’ colleagues are available and ready to discuss a company’s individual journey or a potential partner’s collaboration.
Contact Trade Horizons today with your market entry questions.
