SECTION 2

GETTING READY TO EXPORT


Are You Ready to Export?

Before exporting, you need to evaluate your business readiness, including in fulfilling the potential demand, maintaining the quality of your products, fulfilling the necessary requirements, and financing. This self-assessment could help you identify the gaps in which you need to improve on.

An export-ready business is one that has the capacity, resources, and management to deliver a marketable product or service in the target destination at a competitive price.


At this step, you should consider your products’ market demand and competitiveness, product quality, human resources, financial and legal capacity of your business.

Market Demand and Competitiveness
  • Do you have a product that is potentially viable in the target market?
  • Do you have the resources to conduct market research on the exportability of your products?
Product Quality
  • Can you maintain the quality of your products? What would you need to improve to ensure quality assurance?
  • What is the added value of your product compared to domestic and foreign suppliers in the target market?
  • How competitive is your product compared to the competitors?
Human Resources
  • Do you have adequate human resources to handle the extra demand?
  • Do you have an efficient way to respond to customers' inquiries?
  • Are you able to deal with language barriers? Do you have a local contact in the target market?
Financial Resources
  • Are you ready to provide the necessary capital to produce the requested demand and the exporting costs?
  • Can your business survive with the proposed terms of payment?
  • Do you have alternatives to fulfil the capital requirements?
Legal Resources
  • Requirements, such as the necessary licenses in the target market?
  • Can you meet the applicable standards, such as certifications, testing, labelling, or packaging?
  • What would you need to do to increase your capacity in this aspects?