How can I export on a budget?

I run a small four-year-old business, which sells high-value specialist computer and electronic components and accessories to the consumer hobby market, as well as some business users with niche applications. I sell from two UK stores and our website. Our performance has been steady over the past couple of years within the UK, but I think I should be looking beyond the domestic market to speed up growth. I don’t have a lot of surplus money to spend on researching opportunities overseas, so how would you recommend I go about exporting my products effectively on a small budget?

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A. Andrew Garside answers:

It’s possible to scale up your business and export your products effectively on a reasonable budget, but it’s vital to do your homework. For niche products that appeal to niche customers, using the web as your export channel is a great way of targeting overseas audiences, but your first task is to get under the skin of your UK customers and understand what they buy and what they value about your products and services.

Second, find out what your competitors are doing in this space to ensure that your UK website is aspiring to best practices. The UK is ahead of most overseas markets in the use of web retailing, so learn from the best.

Then research the overseas markets you wish to target where you believe demand for your services will be highest. Be thorough, investigating shipping from the UK and how this will affect pricing, local customer payment practices (not everyone uses credit cards like they do in the UK) and how you will localise pricing, accounting for currency conversion.

The next step is to localise your content. If you are a niche supplier, the content around your products is likely to be valued by your customers. Content should be translated as, overtime, it will come to reflect local attitudes and customer interests.

Once you’ve done all this, pick a territory, set the website up and go for it. If your product offering is strong and the plan is executed well, the return on exporting your products overseas really can be significant for a reasonable outlay.