From the Inside Flap
Even the best businesses sometimes find themselves in a difficult situation when it comes to exporting. For most firms, it is a new area involving a set of complicated challenges, including language, tariffs, and the toughest challenge of all: how to track down new customers. Many companies see more work and less benefit in an export market rather than the home market. In other words, why bother?
Export Now explains in clear business language the steps you can take to compete and win in exports. Frank Lavin and Peter Cohan apply their decades of expertise in helping companies to break down the task into manageable components. Export Now is a step-by-step guide to tackling the international marketplace. The core messages of the book: (1) It is easier than you think; (2) you do need a plan. The authors offer you the tools to devise your own plan in Export Now.
This book boils down the challenge into the "Five Cs" of exporting:
- Country: How to pick the right one.
- Customers: How they differ in new markets.
- Competitors: What to look for when you are away from your home market.
- Capabilities: What you need to win.
- Capability Gap: How to close it.
In Export Now you will learn the secrets of exporting from case studies including:
- Brewdog, the Scottish micro-brewery that used blogs to break into a new market.
- Legacy, a German company with superior products but the wrong export strategy.
- Eno, a Chinese youth clothing retailer started by two Americans, that succeeded by letting its Chinese designers pick popular styles.
Export Now draws on over twenty case studies based on the authors' work helping thousands of SMEs that ventured into new markets. The cases outline their successes, failures, and avoidable mistakes. Read this book to stay in the first category and out of the last two.
From the Back Cover
"Export or die!" might be the well-deserved title of this book. Foreign competitors are coming into your market. You need to start selling to their markets. Your market isn't going to grow as fast as other markets in the world. This book is the best coach that I know to bring you into profitable exporting.
Philip Kotler S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing Kellogg School of Management Northwestern University
Export Now is an indispensable guide to the often complex maze of exporting. Highly recommended.
Thomas J. Donohue President and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
In today's growing and competitive global marketplace, exporting is critical for manufacturers and businesses of all sizes. Often companies don't think they have the tools or resources to become major exporters. Export Now lays out the simple steps to take which will allow small and large companies to become efficient exporters and reach new markets and customers all over the world.
Jay Timmons President and CEO, National Association of Manufacturers
If you are in a small business or new to exporting, Export Now is the book for you. In straight-forward business language, Frank Lavin and Peter Cohan spell out how businesses can get into the export world. At the Commerce Department, I saw many fine small businesses which had products that could appeal to consumers around the world, but these firms lacked the know-how to enter new markets. With practical case studies as well as sound concepts and techniques, Export Now will offer these businesses the way forward in exporting.
Carlos Gutierrez Former CEO Kellogg's and U.S. Secretary of Commerce (2005-2009)
In Hong Kong and across Asia we see dynamic small companies that are poised for growth, but many of their home markets are relatively small. Unless these companies can master the art of exporting, they risk being trapped. Export Now explains how to escape the limitations of the home market and shows how even smallish companies can be successful in the turbulent world of exporting.
Alex Fong CEO, Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce
