Starting your own export business, The process explained

Whenever you decide to start something big, a little time spent on planning in the beginning will save you from lots of thinking sessions (filled with frustration, panic and disappointments) later on. You can make giant looking tasks a lot easier by dividing them in small, practical step-by-step procedures. Starting an export business is not a walk in the park, and when you decide to get into this business, you have to make quite a number of arrangements such as deciding your product, choosing shipment mode, arranging finance and much more.

Initial Stage:

i. Select your product
ii. Determine potential buyers
iii. Market research
iv. Exporting method
v. Comprehensive business plan

First you have to select the product; in case you are not already involved in producing or exporting some product locally (even then you may need to improve its quality and features for international export). After choosing the product, you can now assess the targeted customers. Do some research on the market and analyze it carefully. Next step is to decide upon the exporting method. Remember, all of these decisions and selections should be based on some facts and figures, and not mere assumptions. As stated earlier, time spent in planning & research will save you from possible loss and failures in the future. You need to be watchful, alert and patient in the start, so that you don’t fall in hands of frauds and scams.

Middle Stage:

i. Determine Price
ii. Payment terms & conditions
iii. Terms and conditions for delivery and shipment issues
iv. Shipping mode

After you are done with initial research and planning work, you now have a plan in your hands. You know your potential customers by now. Next step is to determine prices, while doing this, keep all costs and expenses in mind, don’t try to take too much risk by offering extra ordinary low prices. Payment terms and the mode of payment is also an important decision, so is the selection of shipment mode you are going to use.

Final Stage:

i. Financing
ii. Production/Manufacturing
iii. Packaging
iv. Shipment
v. Collection of payment through your bank or some payment processor

After all the planning and marketing, you will start receiving orders from interested customers. At this point, you need to have sufficient funds in hands to manufacture or arrange the products you are looking to export. Once you have got the funds, and you are done with the production work, you need to go through packaging and documentation work before making a shipment to the customers.

This is the basic framework for starting an export business, which will help you in starting smoothly and gradually growing.