With Amazon and eBay readily available in many countries, launching your own overseas sales website may be unnecessary
Many small business owners are choosing to use existing websites such as Amazon and eBay to export overseas. Photograph: Alamy
The world is a huge place full of potential customers for your small business, with technology making it increasingly easy to sell to them.
And while establishing a presence in a foreign market can seem like a daunting process, there are several existing channels that small businesses can utilise.
For example, eBay is visited by 60 million US residents every month, 21 million Germans and 4 million Australians. Amazon has a fulfilment service that picks, packs and delivers to Germany, Italy and France from your inventory, and Alibaba, a similar service, has 36 million customers in 240 countries.
With these resources available, launching your own overseas website, marketing it and building a dedicated sales structure is a bit like reinventing the wheel.
Motorcycle Hut was established in January 2012, selling motorcycle spares, clothing and helmets. The drawback of such a specialism in the UK is the climate, as sales dip during the colder and rainier months.
To tackle this, the company targeted foreign markets. Where the climate is warmer, the selling season is longer. Before going full throttle into an international selling operation, with all the costs and risks that would involve, the company used Amazon to dip its toe into selling throughout Europe and the USA.
Office manager Louise Kitchingham explained: "We used Amazon to understand which brands sold well in which markets and if there were any international markets that stood out as leaders. We soon learnt that the motorcycle industry in Germany was a large market and that we were selling a lot of high-ticket items there.
"Amazon also offered security. It allowed a safe and secure payment gateway, and provided a trusted platform for international customers. Often, as a buyer, you can be wary of purchasing from international sites but this method provided customers with a safe, trusted and secure environment."
Adopting the sales channel of a well-established organisation makes exploring new markets simpler, but it is still a process that requires dedication on the seller's part. Louise has found that the trait of being too polite to complain is a British that which doesn't extend far beyond our borders.
She said: "Europeans have a lot less qualms in complaining and sending items back. If you compare our European customers' complaints to our UK ones they are more than double, as are return rates.
"You have to be careful with this on Amazon as they penalise you for the number of returns and complaints you receive, so it is important to make sure your inventory holds as much information as possible so you have a firm leg to stand on should a customer put in a complaint. Amazon has a lot of policies and standards that you must consistently reach and hit and if you don't they can suspend your account and you must provide a plan of action to get reinstated."
Motorcycle Hut is in the process of building a dedicated German website of its own to capitalise on its success, and will continue to serve and test smaller markets through Amazon.
Cleverboxes, which sells IT hardware, uses a number of similar sites to reachconsumers across a range of markets. The company lists tens of thousands of products across eBay, Play.com and Amazon, as well as the French site Fnac.com, which accounts for an estimated one euro in every three spent online in the country.
Director Vernon Yerkess said: "We decided to look abroad as the UK market is very crowded, and the European market, which has a huge number of potential customers, was less so."
Today, these channels account for around 15% of the company's business, but it's taken some investment to get to this point. This includes hiring multilingual customer service staff and building a complex software system that ensures the right products are sent to the right markets. You don't want to overpay on shipping, or send an item with a plug that won't fit a customer's outlet.
Yerkess added: "Developing an export operation has been a serious investment for us, but it's proving successful and the channels we've used have been a part of that. The fees can be quite expensive, but it's worth it for us to be able to align ourselves with a trusted brand and to benefit from the sheer size of their footfall. It would cost us a great deal more to generate that sort of traffic by ourselves."
James Hardy, head of Europe for Alibaba, says that more than 2m UK SMEs buy and sell over his platform, and the numbers are growing by about 25% every year. "International trade is no longer the sole domain of the big corporations with procurement departments and large budgets."
Looking into new markets can be a rich experience for a business, Hardy said. Foreign markets often have different practices, and learning these can give companies a fresh perspective, as well as new ideas they can adopt.
Hardy also says it's important to seek professional advice for your money matters and your logistics. "Specialists can take you through monetary aspects including import and export tax, and ensure you've accounted for this in the prices you charge. As with any business transaction, make sure you have clearly stated and agreed any costs and payment terms before transactions are made.
"Factor in the time needed to export and plan accordingly. You could consider working with an export professional to manage the process for you, especially if this is something you intend to start doing more frequently. Ensure either you or your supply chain partner has insurance in place to cover the goods while they are in transit."
And don't shirk doing your homework: "As with any new market or business move, spend time becoming knowledgeable about new countries."
Author: Tim Aldred
Source: http://tiny.cc/qxse0w
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