Identifying the top retail chains in Europe where you can sell your products is relatively easy. Approaching and convincing them is a much bigger challenge.
It may be a better strategy to find a distributor first who can help you to get your products in smaller chains or individual stores, and then help you to get to the big names. Or to start online.
In this article you will find more information on the retail market and guidance on how to convince retailers and distributors to work with you.
With over 700 million inhabitants who are relatively affluent Europe offers a huge potential to sell your goods or services. But Europe is not one market, it consists of 44 countries, ranging from huge territories like Germany to small islands like Malta. Where to start and how to enter the market?
The biggest difference is between Western Europe and Eastern Europe. In Western Europe, e.g. Scandinavia, the UK, Germany, France, the GDP per capita is typically over 40,000 USD and if you want to introduce new products there, they should be either of good quality or dead cheap. In Eastern Europe this is different, since the GDP per capita is much lower. People like high quality, high design goods, but can not always afford it. So there is a market for simpler products.
Before choosing one specific market, always look at the following:
Only with this information in hand you can see in what country your product fits best and can have the best chances.
Almost every country or trade block in the world has its own detailing on the international HS-code list. With our report you strongly reduce the risk on misclassifications, delays and higher custom duties than expected.
Tell us what you want to ship and where to and we ask you all relevant questions to get to the most likely code.
If you have a consumer product that you can’t sell directly from your home country to your end customer, you need at least one step in between. This can be a distributor (who also acts as wholesaler or importer), a big retailer directly, or it can be a large web shop. Let’s look at the pro’s and con’s of each option.
You should put a lot of emphasis on drafting a good distributor pitch. Even if you already have great sales materials for your end-users, this often does not make clear what the benefits are for a potential agent, distributor or retailer to work with you.
When you approach potential sales channels with your standard documentation, chances are high that they are holding of. If you make it crystal clear what are the benefits for them, like in the example presentation, you will get a much higher response rate.
Please note that it helps to put concrete data in your presentation. You may think it is sensitive, but just know the secret is in how you achieve the rotation or the low returns level, not in the data itself. So share it here, in order to get the right attention.
Distributors are risk averse, they know the portfolio they have and tend to be happy with it. They can’t just add a product or service to their range, since it will cannibalize on others: