Contributed post
As your business grows in success nationally, it can be tempting to look at the prospect of going international and weighing up the pros and cons. What does this entail for you and your business, and how do you ensure your business takes off across the pond just as well as it has locally? Here are a few crucial starting pointers to think about when considering an expansion of this magnitude.
Market Research
You need to ask yourself the brutal question: does your business and product have the same amount of demand elsewhere? Will expanding internationally actually contribute to your profit margins, success, and be a worthwhile move? Thankfully, the advancements in technology can allow you to test the waters before travelling over them. Depending on where you’re planning on expanding to, start small first. Use marketing, social media, and a good courier to allow your product or service to be available to the country over the internet first. Once you start to build up popularity, it will affirm the decision that this is a smart move for your business, and you can push forward with the expansion. Rather than considering this as unneeded time added on to an already time-costly operation, see it as a way to save you a lot of money if your business appears to be less successful than expected, allowing you to avoid a sure-to-fail expansion.
The Logistics
Once you’ve fully researched the market and have an understanding of how your business is going to thrive, you will need to look at the actual logistics of moving across the pond. Expanding your business in any way comes with its own challenges, but those are only magnified and multiplied when you decide to expand on such a large scale. Your business at the moment will already have a fool-proof operation working behind the scenes that has been carefully calculated to be spread across your resources and staff. Can your business, as it stands at the moment, withstand the added pressures of this monumental expansion? Do you have someone in your team that is capable of holding the business up on your behalf while you are recruiting and starting your expansion up overseas? Do you have an accountants team who specialise in this expansion and the complications that accompany it, or will you need to look into outsourcing a company like Frank Hirth or similar? You will need to scrutinise every aspect of your operation with a fine-toothed comb and ensure that you keep the scale balanced on either side of your expansion, to ensure that one part of the company doesn’t suffer as a result of the other.
Your Budget
Not only will you need to take into account your move, the extra recruitment needed, and the cost of investing in more specialised equipment, but you will need to consider the loss margins that could accompany this type of expansion. You will need to cover in your budget plan and strategy the time expected to make back in potential earnings the cost of the move, and whether the cost of running operations working under that loss is sustainable. If you have any doubts, it may be worth consulting a professional in the local area chosen for your expansion, as they will know how to best market and gain success in the surrounding cultural climate.
Expansion of any company, no matter how big the scale, is going to have a level of risk involved. The extent of your planning process, and taking the time to consult a professional, will help you to lower that risk percentage, and higher your potential success rate.