Josh Hadley 6:30
I love it. What a great introduction. And obviously, like what I think is interesting to point out is that you saw a deep need in the industry, and then you created a solution to resolve that need. And you know, you also identified what your core capabilities are right? For myself, like I love selling physical products, like I just I love that aspect of it. I don’t like SaaS businesses, I don’t love, you know, service based businesses. But I really love, you know, offering product based businesses. And so I love that you honed in on what your core expertise is. And that’s, I think, allowed you to, you know, propel your business even further. But let’s really dive in here. And in talking about like the implications that this can have on our listeners that are seven-figure sellers that are looking to grow to eight figures and beyond. And expanding internationally, I think definitely has a is definitely a big lever that somebody can pull to really take their business to that next level. So Andy, as a business owner, an e-commerce entrepreneur looks at all the different levers they can pull, they could expand on TikTok, they could expand into Etsy or Walmart or retail, or they could expand globally. Like there’s so many different things we could put our initiatives and our effort behind. But the most important thing is to understand which lever is going to provide an outsized return for that business. So my question to you, Andy, is, what type of returns are you seeing for businesses from the US that are expanding into the EU in the UK?
Andy Hooper 8:17
So you every brand is completely different. That’s the first thing to say, you know, different brands have different levels of success. But what we see from our data, we see data points from different points of the customer journey. Here we do the compliance piece, the logistics piece, the online distribution, and because we can see the datasets on all of those, what we see is the successful e-commerce brands, they’re expanding to Europe and employ the right strategy should be able to see after a period of time and this does depend on again, coming back to the brand, they should be able to get 80% of their USL. So if they’re doing, you know, 10 million in the US, they should be able to reach 8 million of sales in Europe with the right strategies. Now that’s gonna depend on a whole load of factors, and we can get into some of those, I’m sure further down the line. But it’s about how you really maximize those opportunities. You know, when you’re looking to grow your brand, you’ve got a million different options. You mentioned some great ones do I sell on TikTok? Do I open a Shopify store do I sell on Walmart do I do and the list obviously goes on and on and on. And it’s about where you’re gonna see that growth. And that opportunity. You know, the biggest growth for us, you know, if you take a typical US brand, doing 10 million, you could do 8 million in Europe in the next 18 to 24 months. That’s not going to be instant. It takes a bit of time. And you’ve got to be prepared to work with a partner’s going to be able to help you maximize what opportunity is when it’s right for your brand. Because a lot of people expand what they do is they go oh well I need to have a need to expand to every country in Europe and therefore I need to be VAT registered value added tax bill or sales tax for the one of a different word in every single country where all you’re going to do is to spend money on VAT straightaway, that you don’t need to do that. So you need to make sure you get people that understand the market. So you maximize the opportunity when it’s right for the brand, and grow the brand as is right for the brand. Not, let’s just expand on for our load of money. It’s about doing what’s right at the right time.
Josh Hadley 10:23
Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. And I like your methodical approach as to it’s not just EU expansion, it’s not just the UK expansion, like there is a method to the madness. Now 80% of sales of what you’re doing in the US, like that’s a really high number, that’s the highest I’ve kind of heard from somebody in terms of projections. Now I know that’s kind of, you know, maybe like an ideal scenario. But Andy, you also mentioned that every business is different, right? And so it’s hard to say like, on average, like, you’re going to experience this lift in sales. So my question to you, Andy, is, what type of US based businesses or e-commerce brands are you seeing have greater success in UK and EU markets than maybe others?
Andy Hooper 11:12
So the two brands that we see that have success, or two, sorry, type the brands that we see how are people with two types, the first of all, they’re doing over 5 million pounds in their home market, that’s a really good starting point, you can start below that. But realistically, you need time, resource, or cash, or a mixture of all of those in order to make it work. So you need to be able to invest in product, you need to be able to invest in your expansion, you need to be able to, and I can use the word invest again. But you see where I’m going, you need to be able to have the ability to be able to make that happen, right, it takes some resource to make that happen. And whether that resources, time, cash, or, or anything else is is what it’s about. So that’s the first thing. So brands that are already doing probably over 5 million pound are perfectly suited for this, if you’re doing under that you can do it, it’s just a little bit hard to work because you haven’t actually made your home market, do you no more saying a success, because that’d be unkind to people doing under five minutes. Because actually, over a million, a million, a million in sales is epic, you know, you should be patting yourself on the back, because you’re doing a great job. But it’s about having the resource cache and time to be able to make that happen above that. So that’s why it’s over five minutes. The second part is those of job brand. You know, it’s not about buying some products, and then flipping them. It’s not about white labeling a product unless it’s different or is unique in some way. It’s about having a brand that can be built globally, that people buy into, to make sure that you when you’re expanding, it’s a unique product. Now that could be a white label product as white labeled in a unique way, I’m not saying you shouldn’t white, yo expand with white label products. And I guess the third one I’m gonna throw in is that if you don’t expand your brand, someone will take that and sell it in that market. So you know, if they then decide that, okay, you’ve got widget one, and you only sell it in the US, I’m going to think well, that’s a great product, I’m going to sell widget one A, in the UK, in Europe, because quite honestly, you don’t have an IP for over here. And your factory will make it for me as much as they will you. And I’m going to put it in a different box. Now I might do a better or worse job than you. But if I was to do a better job, and I was to put that into Europe, then I was put into Africa, then I was to put that into China than I was to put that into South America. Actually, the global footprint of sales is very, very high for me to then come and take over the US market because I’ve got now got the cash and investment to do it would be quite simple. So the three ones are one, make sure you’ve got the cash investment time to do it. Secondly, make sure you got a decent brand. And thirdly, do because you want to make and protect your brand.
Josh Hadley 14:00
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that is a great rundown I think some great criteria to provide people with some, you know guidelines as to how they should be viewing this expansion whether it is right for them have another follow up question on that know, Andy, do you see any particular like product categories? Succeeding well over others, for example? I mean, everybody loves their pets, right? But is like the US like, uniquely, you know, obsessed with pets compared to the UK market or is it supplements, right? workout supplements really do well in the US, but they don’t really have as much traction in the EU for whatever reason, right? Are there any examples that way, like particular product categories that you see succeeding and others not doing as well?
Andy Hooper 14:47
So the downsides of Europe is there’s 28 countries with 28 countries, there’s 28 different variations of exactly what you’ve just said. So every country is slightly different. The advantages is there’s 550 million people. So the ability to get your product to you far greater numbers than in, you know, in the US market is possible. But with that downside is to 28 countries, every single one of those countries is slightly different. The things that we saw working really well, two years ago, I’m working so well now, because we’re in a different economy. You know, the, we were seeing games board games selling hugely well, during COVID. Well, everyone wants to be outside now, we’re then seeing stand up paddleboards, water jackets, hot tubs, all of those things become really, really popular. We’re now seeing supplements been very popular during the sort of COVID period, but have continued being popular. I mean, supplements is probably our biggest largest growing area of all types of supplements, you know, anything you can think of, we’ve probably got sellers that are expanding with supplements of various types, I would say that the growth of supplements in Europe is far greater than it is anywhere else in the US the market is, is established for supplements, sellers, I think would be a right word. You know, it’s commonplace to be selling supplements, people understand and people get it. In Europe, they’re a little bit further back than that. They’re not they they see as a we should be doing that. But I would say that it’s a fast, it’s probably the fastest growing category. Yeah, pets, is always going to be popular, because people spend more money on their pets in certain countries in Europe. So the UK, definitely, Germany, definitely. France, definitely. But some of the more Eastern European countries, you don’t spend as much on pets just isn’t a damn thing. You know, as you move further east and southeast, less and less will be spent on pets. But more and more will be spent on outdoor stuff. You won’t sell any ski stuff as soon as you start getting down to Greece, but you’ll sell more of it as you move north. So you know, there isn’t a one size fits all is very, very seasonal. Or you can have the seasons. But again, different parts of Europe have different seasons at different times. Yeah, it’s the beauty of Europe that you one day you can be skiing, and the next day you can be in, you know, 40 degree heat. Hello, I know the US isn’t too dissimilar to that. You’re used to being just one country. You Could I could I could in half an hour from here today. I could be in France, you know, completely different culture, completely different ethos, everything else. Yeah. And that’s what we deal with. In the US giving half an hour, you wouldn’t even get to one side of the city to the other, let alone a different country. So the answer is there’s not one cat I mean, supplements is the fastest growing category I see at the moment pets go well, so it’s about understanding what your product is, and doing market research to understand what that looks like.
Josh Hadley 17:56
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Now have an additional follow up question to that is, do you ever work with brands that have to actually maybe even change some of their products to actually fit the particular market that they’re trying to go into? Whether it be Spain or France, Germany, the UK, such as like the product wording, let’s take like a daily planner, for example, right? Somebody has a daily planner that’s working well, in the US. One example is, you know, I think in the US a lot of people like to view their calendar starting in Sunday on Sunday, right? Like if you lay out the week, but in other countries, they want to see the week laid out starting in Monday. Yeah, and it’s little nuances like that, where that international expansion becomes a little bit more cumbersome. You know, do you still see that as valuable? If you need to tweak your product accordingly? And do you have any experiences working with brands to they actually have to invest time and actually create a new SKU to serve this you EU UK market?
Andy Hooper 19:02
Yeah, I mean, a lot of our clients, the US-based typically have to change their product in some way. So that could be an electrical product, the plugs different, the plugs different in the UK and the plugs different in Europe. So straightaway, if you take that piece alone, you saw an electrical product, the products need to be different. If you’re selling a product in you fulfilling it from certain places in the world, it’s different countries, it needs to be translated, certainly the health and let’s call it the health and safety part of the label needs to be changed, right needs to be read in that country so people can read it. So there are different things that need to be done. So you need to make sure that the let’s call it the product compliance, along with use of product is right for the market. And you’re right exactly there with the example you gave the planner, you know, the UK and Europe we essentially speak the same language, but words are very different. So, you know if we talk about pants, you know In the US, I talk about pants in the UK, their trousers. Now, if we talk about pants in the UK, that’s briefs, you. So if you start talking about pants, I’m thinking about my briefs, not my trousers, you know, and all of a sudden, you get yourself in this situation where you need to make sure you understand the language. And obviously, in German, that’s something different, and French, and so on. So you’re right, the product does need to tweak in certain places. And there’s, we do this in three stages. Because when you’re expanding your brand, from a, from a you a consultants viewpoint, you want to make sure you’re maximizing the product, the opportunity and everything else. So when you’re expanding to the UK, you can make some minor tweaks, when you then expand to Germany, you can make a couple of minor more tweaks you do you need a specific product in those markets, the answer is possibly. So you have a UK product, a European product, and that will then comes down to, okay, do I need to get my products made and then distributed directly into that region. So let’s take an electrical product, you know, you’d have a UK product made with the distributor. Now, wherever you’re getting in made in China will be able to put a UK plug on the European plug in a US plug. They will all be able to do that virtually every factory you have will be able to do that no problem at all. But will they have the right certification to stamp the plug to say that it’s certified to the regulations in their country? So in the UK, is it see UK see a marked in Europe? Is it CE marked? And obviously in the US? What markings does that need on? You know, there’s a whole load of different things. So it’s about understanding, what tweaks and changes can you make to the product simply because you can overthink this stuff. And as business owners, you you want to have that 8020 rule, you want to get speed to market out going through, you know what you do, I need to do everything. Now you don’t need to do everything but you need to make some fundamental changes to make sure it’s compliant. And following on from that, what you then need to do is make sure that you can maximize the sales to the biggest market from day one, and then build the brand out step by step.
Josh Hadley 22:10
Yeah. All right, Andy, I’m already as a brand owner, I’m already overwhelmed with the amount of complexities that you have to think through with all of this, right? Yeah, I mean, this is definitely in this conversation. I’m already understanding like, this is not something I can go alone that I have no idea what the French market needs, nor the you know, the Spain market or Germany, I might have been a tourist and had visited those countries. But creating a product right that actually meets the needs of those customers is a whole other animal in and of itself. So my question here, Andy, is, how do you kind of guide a brand through this process, so that it is less overwhelming and cumbersome and as easy as a process as it potentially can be to capitalize on all of the e-commerce opportunity in the UK in the EU.
Andy Hooper 23:05
So we we’ve worked over 2,000 clients now. And that is between our vat, our warehousing, our account management, all the different pieces that we deal with. And having done that what we were able to do is identify what worked and what didn’t work. And were we engage with the seller in the right way the wrong way, you know, how did that help the brand, grow, etc. So what we were able to do was come up with a success pathway, what does an expansion pathway look like? And what does it in mean, you need to go through now we came up with a seven step process that you need to go through and have that seven step process, those are 30 things you need to do. But I’m going to break it down into three to make it a little bit easier, quicker and easier for people to understand. Because it doesn’t matter whether you’re expanding to the UK in Europe, or whether you’re expanding to Canada, or India or Australia or Japan or UAE. Actually, if you can solve these three things, it’s about working with partners that can help you to do these three things and making it as easy as possible. So three things are compliance, you split compliance into two areas, business compliance and product compliance. So business compliance, to put it to put it in a nice way. Look, if you’re selling products in a country, the government wants to thank you, for you selling the product in that country. That’s called tax. So the bottom line is you’re gonna need to pay some tax when you swear, wherever you’re selling your products from. That’s the bottom line. You need to have someone who understands the tax in that region and can solve that for you. The second part is your product compliance product compliance comes under three pieces. First of all, understand what regulations your product falls under in that region. Secondly, make sure the product meets those regulations in that region. And thirdly, make sure the labeling on the product is compliant with the regulations in that region. And there are two things you need to consider now off the back of it, there’s another 25 things you could look at. But they’re the real basics that you need to master in any expansion. So that’s compliance. The second one is logistics, you need to work out how you’re going to get your stuff from the factory into a warehouse. And that can be direct to Amazon’s warehouse, or two or three PL in the region and distributed to your customers that could be b2b, to FBA, or it could be direct to consumer, because you’re fulfilling from different marketplaces. Obviously, in there, you need to think about returns reworks customs, a host of other things, but you need to make sure that you’re working for logistics prior to the consult those bits for you in that region, and understands how it works in that region. So let’s take organic for example. You know, if you’ve got organic plastered all over your product, one, is it comply with organic regulations in the region? We’ve already sort of touched on these that warehouse organic, is that you? Can you ship it with an organic producer, can you what is the customs look like? So lots of things you have to consider? And then the third piece is the online distribution. Where are you going to sell it? Which channels, which will give you the biggest bang for buck biggest return on investment, and which ones strategically are right for you in which country? So, you know, realistically, let’s take let’s say you’re already selling on Amazon in the US well, to sell on Amazon in Europe would be a relatively straightforward and simple thing to do. If you’re selling on Amazon in the in the US, but you decide you want to sell on eBay. In Europe, it’s a pretty thankless task, because you don’t already understand it. So you’ve got to take the quick easy wins. Okay, well, I do that. So I’ll do that there. And then make sure that I’m working with someone that understands my supplements so much better in France on CD discount than they do on bowl.com in the Netherlands. And it’s those sorts of intricacies, you then need to make sure you’re working with people to get you to the 80%.
Josh Hadley 26:55
Yeah, and there is a lot that goes into that. But I love that three part framework that you kind of, you know, really boiled it down to like, here are the three essential things that you need to consider going into any market, not just the UK or the EU. And I think that gives, I think some great guidelines and guideposts for our listeners to think about what needs to happen here. I think one of the most important things that I want to highlight from what you said there, Andy is, you know, which specific country should we start with, instead of just looking at the over bigger task of, you know, hey, I need to do EU expansion, that’s overwhelming, if you can narrow it down and say, like, actually the best country for my product, and is going to be Germany. And here’s why, you know, obviously looking at keyword search volume, and what products are currently on Amazon’s that’s something that you help guide your brand through was kind of doing those keyword research analyses to be like, Yeah, let’s not go to Spain, because nobody’s searching this search term in Spain, but tons of people are in Germany, for example.
Andy Hooper 28:05
Yeah. So we have, we’ve got a team of growth managers and account managers that support our clients of all those different things. But you come back to what we’ve already said, again, depend on that product is going to vary. But what I see is the most typical that our clients typically do is they expand into three markets first, and that’s the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. I’ll come to the Netherlands in a moment why that’s important. But the UK and Germany, between them account for two thirds of all sales on Amazon, in Europe. So if you’re an Amazon seller, it makes perfect sense to open up in the UK in Germany, then the most active e-commerce markets as a role. So it’s not just Amazon focus that could be you know, your Shopify site or whatever else you’re working on, so that those two are key because it gives you access instantly to one the UK market you’ll understand that because you speak you if you’re coming from the US you’ll understand your English you’ll be able to work with that. No problem. Germany’s A is a step to that is step to the right with a foreign language if you haven’t already done Spanish in the US. So you can then look at okay, Jeremy’s next mix barkat. Let’s do that next. Now the reason I say the Netherlands is because it’s a strategic location from a logistics point of view, everyone. And I mean, everyone ships all of their products into the Netherlands and distributes from there. So what happens is by shipping into the Netherlands, you can have a warehouse facility or three PL facility in the Netherlands and distribute from there wide does does two things. If you are an Amazon seller, you can you can ship across the border into Germany and you’re thinking or some people are thinking, why don’t I just shipped to Germany, but just Google shipping ecommerce shipping to Germany and just look at the forums. I don’t need to say any more about that. So what you need to do is focus on how you can make that happen easily. So you ship into the Netherlands you distribute in to FBA if that’s what you’re doing into into Germany, and then you can distribute direct to consumer from the Netherlands to every other country, across Europe, simply and easily. Now, if you want a next day delivery across the whole of Europe, you’ll need a slightly different service. But when you’re expanding, initially, you need proof of concept to make sure it’s going to work. You don’t need next day delivery across the whole of Europe, you need to be able to get the products in the hands of customers in a in a two to three day timeframe across the whole of Europe is more than good enough, you know, that’s the way to deal with it. So so that that’s that answer is your when typically when people expand UK, Germany in the Netherlands, you can Germany accounts for two thirds of all sales. And the Netherlands is a strategic location to do your logistics from
Josh Hadley 30:47
I love that I hope our listeners, you know, called out or pointed out that hack, and I think gold nugget that you just shared that the Netherlands is a strategic position. I’ve actually never heard that. Maybe I’m new to that game. But I think that is so so important. And again, why somebody should work with an expert, like yourself that understands the entire game and overseas everything. Andy, I want to ask you like, Do you have any case studies that you could share with us of some brands, you don’t have to call out specific brand names, but some examples of somebody that was doing well in the US and some of the results that they saw? By expanding internationally and give us a few case studies?
Andy Hooper 31:33
Yeah, so there’s a couple of really good case studies. One will be a card game that you will probably have heard of who was a Kickstarter campaign did really, really well in the US. And then because of the Kickstarter campaign, they had sales in some of those other countries using that data. They were like, Oh, that seems interesting. Where do we want to expand to next. So it was a slightly different, it wasn’t a ecommerce, Amazon first starter, or it wasn’t a, let’s build a brand slowly, it was a Kickstarter, this, this specific one. And what they then saw is that they were able to that I mean, they went through our process. And actually, these were one of the ones that we actually piggybacked some of our key learnings from because they were so successful. Yeah, they got to a nine figures in the US. And they sort of probably they’re not quite nine figures here yet across the whole of Europe. But I would say they’re certainly getting close to the 60 to 80% of that. And obviously, the bigger the brands, the harder that becomes to get to the 80%, of course. So, you know, the things that they did is they, they understood the market research. So they, they, they could see where sales were happening based on their Kickstarter campaign. So they could open up two different online distribution in different countries based on that, they obviously got the business compliant and the product compliant, relatively straightforward. Although they had to make sure their products were translated, it’s a card game, you got to be able to read it in the language, you’re going to expand the brand to on you. So you know, yes, the Kickstarter campaign was just in English. But then what happened is, is they wanted to scale that brand, they needed to make those games in Spanish, Italian, French, and so on.
Josh Hadley 33:11
So they actually had to change the product, like they’re going in there. And, you know, having to make sure that the wording is correct on the game itself, updating the individual designs possibly on on those cards, right. Yeah, a lot of effort. But it sounds like it’s been successful. I’ll let you continue.
Andy Hooper 33:32
Yeah, no, and the brand is a what I call a cheeky brand, this humor involved in the brand. And getting that humor into different cultures is really, really tough. You that’s the bit they sort of, they sort of plateaued on if you like, so they they grew their sales, they realized they couldn’t get any sales, they could continue growing sales. But how do they get ourselves to the next level, it was about like culture fit in each region next, and having distribution both for D to C, and obviously, they’re an Amazon seller. So they sold through that network. And then as they continue to grow that brand, they then moved into distribution. So how could they work with distributors in different parts of the Europe in order to get the products into harder to reach areas, so parts of Eastern Europe or Southern Europe there was more difficult, they worked with distributors to get that extra little bit of reach. And for me that that’s probably one of the key successes we’ve seen. And other ones you are going to give. I’ll give one quick other one where, you know, they were a there are large brands that spawn now sponsors a lot of baseball games, I believe, that’s for trimming man’s hair. And they, they expanded to YouTube as a very, very slow start. And they built on the brand element, the influencer elements and then scaled the brand out from there. An X See, what we see from that is actually certain parts of Europe have zero interest in that whatsoever. And just not interested. But other parts of Europe are probably more bought into as a percentage than than other markets. You know, I don’t know what the percentage is in the US, for example, but the UK will probably be matching it as a percentage, you Germany would be matching Italy a bit above average, France would be below average, but still be there. Spain won’t care. You know, so there are different markets. So that one had the success, but had to sort of fall in a couple of markets to understand the culture and why it works and why it didn’t.
Josh Hadley 35:36
Yeah, I’m curious on that, no, you know, you talk about the card game example having success and the amount of time and effort that they would have had to have undertaken to translate everything because this is a card game. And then it was humor based. And so, you know, US based humor probably doesn’t apply to, you know, 100%, the UK and vice versa, like, you’ve got to really dive into the minds of those people. So this is an extensive amount of effort. And it sounded like with the previous case study, with the hair trimming, like, it didn’t go over well, in every single country. So the question is this, how can a brand, you know, maybe they’re just doing 5 million, they’re not a nine figure US based brand with unlimited funds? They’re still a bootstrap company? How can they test out all of these different markets, especially if they need to invest a lot of time kind of redesigning a product in order to fit different countries? What would be your recommendation to somebody with a brand like that, before they spent 28 different, you know, iterations creating different products for each different country?
Andy Hooper 36:47
Well, I think it comes back to the 80-20 rule I talked about earlier. You know, 80% is the expansion and making it happen. The 20% is making fine tuning as you go with any business. Anyone that doing, you know, bootstrap business, you know, our business is completely bootstrapped. There’s no VC money, there’s none of that is all Bootstrap, we’ve been profitable from day one. And we’re just grinding it out, like many of you listening right now. And I think that, you know, what you need to think about is, okay, I need to take action and make something happen, first and foremost. So actually, the expansion is, first of all, I need to do something, and you can over complicate things by thinking about it, the best thing to do is work with a partner that can talk you through it to how to make it easy, not sell you everything that you do need in a year or two or three years time, they can give you a strategy on based on your product, this is what we would do. Your expansion needs to be in the UK and Germany, first, these are things you need to do, this keeps your costs down, you want to make sure that you’re maximizing the money in the business from a cash flow point of view, very important in E commerce to make sure you can get the products to reinvest in more stock, and to invest in advertising to get site on the product. We all know sales velocity is key, go yes, everything can have a different algorithm. But the bottom line is sales velocity is the key to selling your products. So whatever way you carve that up, you’ve got to pay for some advertising in some way in some form. So you know, when you expand, it’s about having the cash to reinvest in the products to get more stock and everything else. And if you’re thinking about that, you’ve 5 million pounds seller, you know, you’ve got 50 grand less this time $50,000 or pounds doesn’t really matter at this stage, to invest in your expansion, you know, some of that is going to need to go on actually expanding, you know, you get a need to invest in product compliance, label compliance, you VAT, you, logistics, all that sort of stuff. But the second thing is you’re gonna need to invest in your products. A lot of brands we see at the moment that are expanding the ones that contain the product, they’ve gotten us, they’re overstocked. And they can expand with that they’ve already got the product, what do you need to do to tweak and change that product to expand with it, because if you’re overstock because the logistics network was screwed, we didn’t sell as much in Q4 as we were anticipating because of COVID. And all those little things that go on with that, you might be able to just expand with the brands you’ve got. And I think, you know, making sure that people don’t do expand, but don’t stop thinking to start thinking about it too much. Because if you do think about it be like Well, that seems a headache that seems a headache that seems a headache. Well you actually need to do is talk to someone that understands the market, understand Speedzone understands your product, in broad terms, or notes, people have got similar product that could go these are things you need to do this, how much is gonna cost you you were in a gear expansion business. So we will say to you based on what you do, based on what you do, the investment in order in our services to enable the expansion to happen is going to be $10,000 $15,000 $40,000 a year without knowing I don’t know, but the average investment cost expansion cost is 10,000 set up off the back of that you We’re only going to sell, you’re only going to pay for what you sell. So if you need a three PL, for example, you’re going to pay what you use, you know, that’s going to be relative to what you sell, your shipping is only going to be relative to what you sell, or ship. So there are a lot of variables in there. But to expand our average initial expansion cost, I’m happy to, you know, do is anywhere between probably, it’s probably $15,000, you know, to in order to get you set up to expand his $15,000 for you to get set up, you know, if you want all the bells and whistles, gear will cost you $40,000. So that’s going to depend on you as a brand to enable that. You know, so if you’re sitting there thinking, How do I maximize the opportunity? It’s not really that much to expand, like, everyone thinks it’s over complicated. It’s not over complicated. It’s not expensive if you’ve got the right people by your side.
Josh Hadley 40:50
Yeah. I love that. Andy, you summed everything up really, really well, right there. One final question I want to ask you on this topic is, if you were to predict what things are going to look like with Amazon in the UK and EU over the next five to 10 years, what do you see changing? What do you see coming to fruition in the European market for Amazon?
Andy Hooper 41:14
Okay, well, I have a bit of a theory. And my theory is that history repeats itself. So my theory is that whilst Amazon might be the biggest today, I’m not convinced it’s going to be the biggest in 10 years time. I have no idea history tells us though, the biggest companies go through cycles. And we know that will it be there in 10 years time course it’ll be there, will it be the biggest in 10 years, I got no idea. But history tells us the long term play, it won’t be we know that in probably 20 or 30 years, there’s going to be other people that overtaken that for whatever reason. Now, if I then come back to so took five or 10 years out for me is way too far. If I come more to the more macro more sort of let’s let’s call it the next three to five years, if that’s the right, bear, I reckon that what we’re going to see is that your Amazon will keep a foothold and open more marketplaces in more countries at the moment. It’s only got, although it’s European based, there’s only 10 marketplaces, only opening 10 countries, although all the other 18 countries can buy from that mark those marketplaces. So they’re gonna open up at more online stores in the country specific 100% that’ll mean, the products will get into more people’s hands. The biggest play for Europe is about how you maximize the play an app whilst Amazon is the biggest in certain countries, it’s the biggest in the UK, it’s not necessarily the biggest in all the other countries. So in in the Netherlands is bolder calm. In France, it’s CD discount in Germany is Royal and auto, depending on where you look, in Poland and for Eastern Europe is the Landro. So there are all these different marketplaces actually do much more in the home market than what Amazon does. So it’s about how you get your products onto those as an omni channel approach. And again, to get to the 80%, you’ve got to do the omni channel approach is no other way of doing it. Unless your product just flies in, in Amazon, like you know, and that happens. Of course it does, well, realistically, you’ve got to have an omni channel approach, and you’ve got to be able to maximize all those opportunities with the right partner that can guide you through that, or can say, you know, you put your products in our warehouse, sign up to it, if you don’t sell anything, you haven’t lost anything. You know, there’s also mileage in that.
Josh Hadley 43:34
I love that. And, uh, you have given some great insight to all of this. I, you’ve shared a wealth of wisdom and actual practical strategies that can help a seven figure seller scale to eight figures and beyond with this international expansion. Now, as we wrap things up here, Andy, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. Here are the three action items that I noted, Andy, let me know if you think I’m missing something. Step number one is if you have not crossed $5 million in US based sales, I would probably continue to double down on your efforts in the US market. And, and in kind of relation to that, I would say make sure you’re building an actual brand amongst those sells. So don’t just say hey, I’ve got three brands. And in total, we do $10 million, but each of them are at about $3 million each, because you’re going to need to come to the international market with an actual brand. And so that would be action item number one is like keep the hustle and grind going with a brand in the US market until you cross that $5 million. Mark. I think that’s a great guideline. Step number two is there are a lot of different there’s a lot of noise out there in terms of international expansion. Here’s the biggest action item: find a mentor and a guide that can provide the expertise that you need to make that international expansion happen. We talked a lot about a lot of different topics and a lot of watch outs, product compliance, business compliance, all of those things need to be taken into consideration. Find a guide that has been there, done that. So that’s action item number two. And then action item number three, is what you said earlier, Andy is like, you just got to do it. Like there’s so instead of, you know, getting caught up, but in analysis paralysis by analysis, vice versa. Instead of just getting caught up, like there’s so much I need to consider, I need to make sure I have all my ducks in a row. That’s why you lean on that mentor, and just take your step forward, take one step forward, you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. But you will never know if a huge opportunity is on the other side of that door, if you don’t at least knock and put your foot forward. So those are my simple action items and strategies that people should be taking away from today’s episode. Andy, do you think I missing anything? Or would you add anything to those notes?
Andy Hooper 46:11
No, I mean, I think the biggest one for any business owner is to take action and make stuff happen. You know, I’m a big believer that, you know, you you sit and dwell on stuff. And actually, if you sit and dwell on it, in a year’s time, you’ll be like, I should have done that. My competitors now have done it, you’ve gotten to take the action, in order to make it. If you want to scale a brand or scale a business, you know, you have to take action, you have to be prepared to go through that action to make things happen. You know, I totally agree that you need a mentor, coach, whatever you want to call it within your business in various forms. You some of those things are very popular, you but you need someone who’s done it, you know, we were in a position to be able to support people with that we are your guide, hence the success pathway, you know, what does that look like? Here’s the framework. And for those that want to expand, you can take the three things away that you compliance, logistics, and online distribution, there are three things you’ve got doubled down on think on a bear from going to expand, whether it be to Mexico, Canada, Australia, Europe doesn’t matter. They’re the three things you’ve got to now. And you’ve got to understand those before you do it. And you can just mark make some notes.
Josh Hadley 47:21
I love it. Well said. All right, Andy, I love to ask each guest the following three questions at the end of each episode. So let’s start with number one, what has been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?
Andy Hooper 47:32
So I’ve read hundreds of books, I’ve when I say read, I’ve listened to hundreds of books. I I’m not very good at reading actual books. But I spend a lot of time listening to books in the gym, on bike rides, whatever, on the car, wherever else. And I think that whilst there’s lots of different books, there are different types of books out there that work for different people. And I think that the number one thing that people should consider when they’re growing a business, you can have all the best websites, you can have all the best staff members, you can have the start doing now you can have all the rest of it. But the number one thing that I think that people need is sales and marketing. How do you understand who your customer is? How do you know where they are? And how do you get them in order to grow your business? So I remember when I first started out of business, I was doing very different learnings and everything else. And and the series of books that stuck with me whilst we don’t do this in house is so Russell Brunson, Clickfunnels. There’s sort of three books that he’s got: Dotcom Secrets, Expert secrets, and Traffic Secrets. Now, whilst I don’t necessarily have Clickfunnels, it’s not part of what we use for our business. You know, actually, the methodology, the process, the simple pieces of know who your customer is, know where they are, know where to go and find them, and to pull stuff together is exactly right. And this is probably the books that I’ve read three or four times at different points, not necessarily from a funnel, generation point of view, but from a marketing and sales point of view to understand, okay, how do people look for stuff, where do people go, you know, not how to sell you sell to one person, okay, I’m trying to get buy my stuff, the more from a marketing lead point of view, you know, and I think that you’ve got to have different opinions and everyone’s gonna have a different opinion, whether that’s gonna work for them or not, you the self development stuff is always going to be important, you know. How do you get up in the morning, join a 5 a.m. club and smash out a day? Always going to be important, but for me, having someone that you can listen to that resonates both in the book podcasts or whatever else. For me that was important, that ability to talk about marketing, how you thinking about the customer all times.
Josh Hadley 49:50
Yeah, I love that. Those books I would highly recommend as well. Even if you know it, taking the principles away from them, even if you’re not selling on, click funnels specifically. Alright, let’s go to question number two, what is your favorite productivity or software tool that you’ve recently been using, that you feel like has been a game changer.
Andy Hooper 50:11
So I think the number one tool we used as we were scaling was Trello. Trello, was a really easy place to put business plans, strategies, list for top clients, a whole load of different things really easy and simple. We use this really, really well. And you for me, Trello was probably the game changing piece of software, that to be fair, we use very little now, because we have CRM software, more software than we probably really need or want. But it’s all integrated with that type of stuff. But Trello, for me, was the number one hack that helped me to scale the business that I used, it was free, that we still use broadly today, that for anyone listening thinking, Well, I don’t really want to pay for a CRM, or I don’t really want to pay for you some project management software, I don’t want to, you know, actually Trello does all of that really, really well. Really simply. And it’s easy to use. And I think that’s the important thing is easy to use for people. So that’s my number one software that we use to help us scale and grow. And may the listeners hear us wanting to scale and grow, hence why I use that one.
Josh Hadley 51:19
I like it. That is a great tool and recommendation. I’ve used that as well. All right. Our third and final question here, Andy is, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that you would recommend our listeners shouldn’t be following and why?
Andy Hooper 51:35
So I think that one of the key, there’s a lot of influences in e-commerce, some know what they’re talking about, some don’t know what they’re talking about. And we’ve all been byproduct of that somewhere along the line, the ones that talk lots, in my experience of the ones that aren’t doing. So it’s about making sure you’ve just got a balance of how much is this person doing? How much this person not doing? What are they doing? And what can you see they’re doing what the tactics they’re making in order to grow and scale their business. So one of the ones that I’ve taken over the years is there’s a VAT company here in the UK completely competes with what we do. But the school of ask accounting and business consultants, I think a vast many people have they’ve done VAT certainly for Amazon will probably have heard of them. And you the owners of that. Melanie and Angela loss, whilst this two people for the universe, sort of the business owners, you know, what they’ve done strategically for their business to grow, it has worked really, really well. They don’t shout loads on LinkedIn, they don’t do loads of stuff. There’s so many people that if you get the opportunity to speak to and listen to, you should do they’ve got a wealth of experience in e-commerce, totally understand the market, and have grown a really successful business. And one of the things I think that business owners certainly in e-commerce are guilty of doing they they like to talk to people just in e-commerce doing e-commerce. The reality is an e-commerce brand is a logistics business is a brand business is an SEO business is a distributor and goodness knows wherever else. So understanding and talking to people outside of e-commerce in those different sectors to understand what’s going on is really, really important. You can learn more probably from some people outside of the industry, then you can in in some ways, unless you’re talking to the really right people like yourself, Josh, you know, it’s about making sure you’re listening to those different people. So in the industry, I would say that what that company’s doing, what that that team is doing is something that people should follow and listen and look into, although they’re a competitor of ours, there’s so many ecommerce sellers, it doesn’t matter. Like I love it. So that’s why I would recommend
Josh Hadley 53:46
I love it and a great guidelines, as usual. And yet, as we conclude here, where can people go to learn more about you, follow your journey? And then secondly, if people want to utilize your services, if they need that guide, or that mentor or that expert to help them guide to help guide them in this EU UK expansion, how could they reach out to you and find you?
Andy Hooper 54:09
now, so the best way to get ahold of me is LinkedIn, just go to Andy Hooper into LinkedIn. And I’m pretty certain I’m going to come up in one form or another. So that’s where you can get me from from that description. From a business point of view, we successfully expand ecommerce brands globally. Now we have a key focus on Europe, but we can advise and support in other areas of the world. But if you want to grow and expand your brand, the best place to do this, there’s two things you do go to our website and on our website, you can download our seven step guide on how to successfully expand there is no wall behind it you haven’t got put your email address in and there’s no click bait to go put your email address and all the rest of it and I fundamentally believe that when you’re ready to expand, you want the people that can help and support you. We are the right choice and you’re come to us. So you can go to our website, which is globale-commerceexperts.com. And you can, you can obviously Google us, you’ll find us. But to download the seven step guide, it’s our website, forward slash podcast. And you’ll find the seven step guide there. I mean, you can go to if you listen to a podcast, you can go to our podcast, global expander secrets, and you’ll be able to listen to our podcast that gives you all of the information on how to expand we don’t hold anything back. We teach people how to expand because we believe that everyone should take their brand globally, but we believe they should do what is right for them, not pre described by anyone else. So go and get all the information from our podcasts is on YouTube and all the rest of it as well. But just look for globally casts experts.
Josh Hadley 55:40
Awesome. Andy, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us today.
Andy Hooper 55:46
Josh, thank you very much for having us. Thanks for listening, and hopefully we’ll help people expand in the near future.
Outro 55:52
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