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Friday 3 May 2013

TALES FROM THE ROAD 23: ONE TO ONE MARATHON IN JAKOBSTA




I was approached in January by a not-for-profit organisation in Finland to deliver international trade training services in April to a group of companies from the creative industries sector, most of them young or start-up companies, but also one or two more established businesses. My initial discussions with Christer Sjoholm centred on a two day project, with a presentation on general aspects of international trading on the first morning, followed by a series of one-to-one sessions with interested companies for the remainder of my visit.

Anticipating that we would have anything between six and ten one-to-one meetings, we allowed one hour for each followed by a 15 minute note-taking and comfort break. Each company was required to provide a single page summary of what they wanted to achieve out of the session, and the deadline for those summaries was one week before my visit. As the deadline approached it became clear that we would fill most of the remaining day and a half following the presentation, and by the time the deadline passed, thirteen companies had signed up!

Never afraid of a challenge, I embarked upon what I thought would be a punishing schedule, but the truth is that I was energised by the enthusiasm of each of the companies, their fantastic creations and ideas, their plans, and in some cases their complete lack of a plan! Time just flew by, and I am sure I could have squeezed in a few more one-to-ones had there been more companies to see.  I have worked before with companies from the creative sector, and quickly learned that their passion is in what they create, not in getting their products to market, understanding international business, or even in basic business organisation. 

There was a diverse group of companies: illustrators, graphic designers, textile designers and manufacturers, photographers, writers, a wholesaler, a soft toy manufacturer, an established Finnish fashion brand, and a specialist manufacturer of electric bass guitars. All of them knew their products intimately, and all had great stories to tell about how their product or service was conceived. Like so many smaller businesses, they felt that they were not receiving the professional help they needed to drive their companies forward into international markets.

The real issue is that they were actually more interested in creating products and ideas rather than in developing business. In most cases, they wanted someone else to take the pain and hassle of getting their product to market. In one case, it was suggested directly to me that I would become the Sales Agent for a range of products, to which I suggested directly ‘No’, but it was a good try and it highlighted exactly the deficiency of many similar companies, in Finland, in the UK, worldwide. It’s one thing to create, it’s quite another to sell.

Jakobstad is located in an area of western Finland where for historic and general conquest reasons 90% of the population is Swedish, and the vast majority of them have a very good command of English. There is a strong awareness of international markets and a tradition in the area of selling products overseas. Most of these younger companies are just putting their foot on the first rung of the ladder, and they need the kind of handholding that almost all companies need in their formative years.

I very was surprised that social media has not been embraced in Finland as it has been back here in the UK, especially given the profile of the companies who I was talking to. In isolation individual social media sites are of little worth, but collectively they can act as different shop windows for your products and services. You can use each social media to present your products in a different way, to a different audience, and at a different time. It is all about getting your marketing mix right and about you controlling your online presence rather than it controlling you!

But most of all, why would you not want to use social media to maximum effect when it is largely free? And why would you not want to use social media when you can get your message across several times a day, while spending only a few minutes doing it. Social media is an online trend, and we have seen many of these trend come and go in the short time that the world has had the Internet, so it is important to companies large and small to work with the trends of the day and to anticipate those that are just around the corner. And that was part of my message to the companies in Jakobstad.

I also helped to put them directly in contact with specialists offering a mix of professional international services, from intellectual property rights, currency exchange, customs & excise, to financial and logistics services, and in most cases I was able to suggest key target companies in the UK for their products, and provide guidance in how best to approach the market. So now we await the arrival of some of those companies in London during Design Week in September, to see how they have progressed and what they have learned. And in the meanwhile I will enjoy communication with every one of them, and to do my bit in helping them to realise their ambitions.

JOHN REED, EXPORTAID

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