You must compete on design at the small business level, yet it may seem in my lectures on small business food exports I am advising people who act as agents to sell as if Plan B, selling off the shelf items.
It would seem so, but what we are selling is not kombucha or energy bars, but a test. the buyer overseas needs to test new products in his market, and we design a product that he can test, the LCL MOQ FOB. So in food export start-up, our initial product is the test we design, a test of the product in new markets.
On the one hand the buyer overseas is using our LCL MOQ FOB to test the product in his market. At the same time we, by the test search and learn, discover new business that has not shown up on anyone else's radar. And then based on a critical mass of info no one else has, we proceed into building the business of selling the product and move out of the search and learn phase. Yet here again you begin to redesign your product, based on the feedback of the proven customer. For the first time you begin to localize the label, make changes in packaging or portion, add the traceability function, and the words "Export Quality.". Your investment is not money, but time, discipline and patience. You don't look for finance, but customers; not business loans, but sales.
We introduce old product (necessarily a product must be selling in USA before nit can be exported effectively) to new markets, and then as the markets are proven (and in effect become old) we redesign the product based on valid and reliable feedback.
The next session of the online exporting food course is here....
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