The show is over, the entertainment is done, now the whip comes down. In small business international trade one essential part is we exploit cheap management of product development and manufacturing.
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We compete on design and not price. Since we are innovators, our products are necessarily of special design and solve a problem... we are likely obliged to contract with a designer to get our product “right” (by customers’ estimation). The most important thing in business is the customer, the hardest thing is getting the product right.
The system is set up as though it assumes your product will NOT sell, and you depend on market feedback to get the product (or service) right.
One might think that there is enough perceived value in off-the-shelf products coming from overseas to compare favorably to the domestic, and thus be advantaged. Unlikely, but if so, anyone can get it also, and they can simply compete on price. But but but, I’ll get an exclusive. No you won’t, because exclusives are a fantasy.
Our items probably take quite of bit of back and forth to get right all of the special design work on our behalf takes time and talent. certainly that work is costly, and far more costly in USA than in most places overseas. Think of the time sailboards were being introduced..and how a surfboard had to be modified and a sail attached... something so minor is actually a lot of engineering and testing.. and the first versions are never perfect... the people trading in sailboards keep improving the items..like an Apple computer. Try paying for that in USA. ouch..
Once we were excellent at being conservators in usa, that is mass production. At the small biz level we send the expensive management of product development overseas.. and when that is worked out, we leave the expensive part of managing the production overseas as well. So we at the small business level are exploiting cheap management overseas.and cheap management overseas is exploiting us for cheap management of marketing (of what the overseas supplier makes) in usa. We contract designers in USA market to tweak the product for USA.
The result is the consumer wins with newer and better of everything coming in...
Your customers will only start with test amounts. So if the is so far removed from what's out there that it does not sell for the customer...no big deal, since the retailer never took much risk in what they bought from you anyway.
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