Small Business Growth Tips – Exporting, huge investment required

Small business growth tips are something most, but not every, small business owner is

Small Business Exporting Tips

searching for. An article I have just read on the American Express Open Forum talks about exporting as a way of growing businesses. Now, I have great admiration for the American Express Open Forum ( note that the articles presented by the forum are the writers own opinions and not those of AMEX). It provides a huge amount of  quality information for small business, however this article, by Suzy Frisch seems to imply that for small businesses  growth  can be achieved easily by exporting. Suzy writes:

Going global is really not as hard as most people think. More often than not, you can stay in country to get your international business up and running. And the extra effort it takes to break into foreign markets will be more than worth it.

Click here to read the full article

Sounds easy, doesn’t it. I have written on some basic issues on exporting, at a practical grass roots level click here to view. in a previous post and now I have a little bit more to add.

 Here’s my warning on small business growth tips by exporting

I’m based in New Zealand, a small country with a population of  about 4.5 million. So because of our size the range of goods available can be a bit limited for some consumers. Also, at present the US dollar exchange rate means that we can purchase goods from the States at a lower cost than similar products are sold here.

Unfortunately this hurts local small businesses who cannot compete on price. So it is with a heavy heart, as a small business owner myself, that I admit that my technologically minded children have purchased goods from the US.

Here’s the relevant part. It is obvious by the packaging, the website, the picking and packing, the invoice and the efficient freight companies that there has been a massive investment  to get the goods to our part of the world.

For instance, instead of customs documentation being hand written and stuck on to the parcel, the packaging has been printed with all the relevant information required for customs and the freight forwarder.

So what I am saying is this, in order to grow via exporting, in an efficient manner,  a massive investment is required. Whether it be my employing more staff to handle the orders, a website that has the controls in place to accept international credit cards, the picking and packing,the processing and recording documentation or spending more on other types of technology. There is a cost to this growth

Now you can start out in a small way and slowly build up, but a warning,  it may not be sustainable and your bottom line may not actually increase. One of the factors mentioned above is the value of the US dollar in relation to ours. This can change overnight and what happens if  you have invested heavily in exporting including building up inventories, only to have the playing field change.

I’m not saying that as small business growth tips, exporting is not the way to go. I am simply trying to give some balance to the all too rosey picture painted by some commentators.

I would love to hear your view.