Business Exporting

Manufacturing items for sale in your own country as well as others is a sound business decision. However you do have to consider both the advantages and disadvantages of exporting before you jump into this type of business.

Advantages of Exporting

Getting involved in exporting can help your business by:

Increasing your domestic competitiveness
Increasing your sales and therefore your profits
Helping you gain a percentage of the global market for your business
Reducing your dependency on existing markets
Extending the sales of your existing products
Reducing the need to develop new product lines
Helping stabilize fluctuations in the market
Helping you gain information about foreign competition

Disadvantages of Exporting

As with any business, there is a downside to exporting as well.

You may have to forego profits in the short term in order to cover the expenses of setting up such a business
You may have to hire more staff
You may have to modify the product or the packaging in some way. This is true if you are exporting the product to a non-English speaking country.
You will have to promote your product in other countries, which means you will have to develop new promotional material.
Personnel may have to travel to other parts of the world to make business deals and you will incur a cost for this travel
You will have a longer wait for payments. There is also an economic risk involved in that you may never receive payment, especially if the company you deal with in a foreign country goes bankrupt.
You will need to apply for and receive special licenses to export your products.

Most people getting involved in exporting today employ e-commerce. They also conduct business meetings online through various software so that the world is becoming smaller and smaller. You need to have voice mail, fax machines and Internet capability in order to operate in the export business so that you can be available to your affiliates and customers 24 hours a day.