Expansion Monday

In my last post we discussed the three CORE elements for any expansion.

You can find that article here.

But I guess the actual question is expand to where? This will always depend on your starting point of course and your current method or route to market.

There will be differing opinions on the different routes depending on whether you are a marketplace seller or your an e-commerce website. The traffic for these is different, your products will be different, but what we know is there are some general areas to consider and markets that are larger than others.

Largest e-commerce countries

When entering any of the markets be sure to follow our expansion pathway and follow the process to ensure you do it right. In our experience those that dont follow the pathway and advice tend to find sticking points along the route.

1. China

Annual online sales: $2.78 trillion

E-commerce share of total retail sales: 52%

2. United States

Annual online sales: $843 billion

E-commerce share of total retail sales: 19%

3. United Kingdom

Annual online sales: $169 billion

E-commerce share of total retail sales: 4.8%

4. Japan

Annual online sales: $144 billion

E-commerce share of total retail sales: 3%

5. South Korea

Annual online sales: $120 billion

E-commerce share of total retail sales: 2.5%

6. Germany

Annual online sales: $101.5 billion

E-commerce share of total retail sales: 2.1%

7. France

Annual online sales: $80 billion

E-commerce share of total retail sales: 1.6%

8. India

Annual online sales: $67.5 billion

E-commerce share of total retail sales: 1.4%

9. Canada

Annual online sales: $44 billion

E-commerce share of total retail sales: 1.3%

10. Spain

Annual online sales: $37 billion

E-commerce share of total retail sales: 0.72%

Summary

Given the above information will now help you to consider the best options for you. For our clients we see the logical steps of expansion to be;

• US
• Europe (UK, Germany, France, Spain from above, amongst another 24 countries)
• Canada
• Japan/South Korea

The other two, China and India will depend on your strategy and willing to deal with the complexities. In goes without saying that the combined population of these two make it a very strong contendors, most of the brands we work with would be unlikely to crack this until much further in their expansion.

So here are my questions for you?

1. Where would you expand first?
2. What scares you the most about any expansion?

Thanks for your time.

Andy

My names Andy Hooper and I do three things.

1 - Globally expand $10m+ brands worldwide to help them double their business

2 - Acquire Ecommerce Service providers (up to ￡10m in T/O) to help our sellers to continue to sell worldwide and create the best experience

3 - Building a Tribe of entrepreneurs that share a vision to be a global player and dominate - Become an Expander today.