In the United Kingdom, over 205,000 businesses are currently exporting – they represent less than 9% of the business community in the country. So, why would a business start to export? There are a number of benefits that exporting businesses benefit from and we will cover a few here:
- Access to more customers – This is an obvious one but if you are doing business in only one country you are limiting yourself to a range of opportunities and growth. Just by expanding to our close neighbours in Europe, you could increase your potential customer base from a potential 66 million to over 741 million. This would of course depend on the nature of your business.
- Diversifying the risks – Exporting businesses are said to be more resilient than domestic companies. If the domestic economy starts to weaken, you might still have assets and opportunities in growing economies enabling you to balance the risks. Your domestic market can also become saturated for your goods/services, but you might be able to introduce them to other markets.
- Seasonal demands – If your products sales strongly rely on a specific season, you might be able to compensate for the loss of income in your domestic market by going to foreign markets where the seasons are different.
- Competitiveness – Companies trading internationally tend to be exposed to more innovative technologies or marketing from their foreign competitors. The valuable ideas that might come from it will help them become more competitive both domestically and internationally. Greater production to meet the demand overseas can also help you become more competitive in terms of price by benefiting from larger economies of scale.
But exporting also has its challenges and costs. You must also have the resources and the skills within your team to understand the regulations and documentation applicable. We’ve got a range of training courses and services to help new to export businesses start their international trade journey.Please contact our team at exportbritain@gmchamber.co.uk for more information.
We will be running a free Export Basics masterclass next week on 6th August, please see more information and register here.