The Importance of Global Business

The vast majority of the world's business community will be glad to see the back of 2020 as Covid 19 played havoc with budgets and projected growth forecasts. In reality, it forced many of us to scale back on our ambitions for the year and re align sales forecasts, budgets and sadly in many cases personnel numbers.

Our inability to travel during the pandemic to develop new markets really hurt so many organizations that we will be counting the loss of these new revenue streams for the next couple of years. It also critically hammers home the point that we ignore these profitable new countries at our peril. Whilst survival is imperative and a natural focus point during such unrivalled times, it begs the question at what cost ?

Discounting our brands in both our home market and core surrounding countries is a slippery slope. It destroys the fabric and worth of any brand and ultimately leads to potential grey market activity, given the ease that local agents and retailers can purchase the brand in the home market. In the same breath handing over multiple markets to one distributor is another classic mistake that brands make, as in the short term it seems a much easier platform to manage. It very rarely works and indicates to many that there is a lack of understanding about how each market works.

Most new markets judge brands on their history and heritage. This in turn adds tangible value to the perception of the consumers in these new markets and therefore affords brands the opportunity to secure worthwhile margins for their products. This is eroded dramatically by the advent of grey or parallel importers and can quickly hit brands hard when similar products are offered for sale at discount retailers right next to prestige and expensive boutiques.

Once the world exits this Covid 19 nightmare, the best investment organizations can make is getting their highly prized and truly unique road warriors back on the road at the earliest opportunity, to start developing those new markets face to face.

Its also imperative that companies understand that finding key Global Business Development expertise is extremely difficult and time consuming....rule of thumb is they need at least 12-15 years practical exposure and have opened at least 25-30 new markets before they can truly call themselves effective operators with a sound understanding of working in global markets. What works in Taiwan, does not match with what works in Mexico and what works in London does not translate in Abu Dhabi !!!

John Debono spent seventeen years based in Asia Pacific and ten years based in New York developing markets across most Continents including the Middle East, Mexico and South America. His International business career has allowed him to manage overseas subsidiaries globally and afforded him numerous working and right of abode documents. John is currently based in the UK.