Thinking of Exporting?

1. Thinking of Exporting? Todd S. Thompson Director Trade Competitiveness project Southern Africa global competitiveness hub TTHOMPsON@SATRADEHUB.ORG WWW.SATRADEHUB.ORG +267 74784003

2. A Warning American English Will Be Spoken

3. What Is The Trade Hub?

4. AGOA • Africa Growth Opportunity Act • Gives African producers duty free tariffs on a wide-range of products. • www.agoa.gov

5. Some Things to Consider Before You Export

6. Three Parts to Any Business • Product or Service • Financial Management/Accounting • Marketing No Individual is Equally Good or Enjoys Doing All Three of Them

7. What Is Your Product or Service? • What Are You Providing to the Market? • Who is Your Competition? How Big Are They? • Where Does Your Product Fit on the Product Life Cycle? • If Looking at Exporting – What Makes Your Product Unique?????????

8. Product Life Cycle

9. Determining Feasibility Is there a major barrier blocking your path?

10. Feasibility Decision To Proceed or Not To Proceed

11. Financial Management and Accounting • Start-up Financial Forecasting • Day-to-Day Financial Management

12. Do Not Kid Yourself When It Comes To Financial Forecasting • If you do not have adequate start-up capital you will fail. • Lack of Cash Flow can kill a business. • Most start-ups take twice as much money and twice as much time as anticipated.

13. Marketing • Why Has Someone Lived Their Life Without Your Product, But Now Life is Incomplete Without It? • Who is Your Target Market? • What Percentage of the Market Do you Need to Get in Order to Succeed? • Product, Place, Price, Promotion

14. Some Other Things to Think About

15. Strategic Planning Simple Definition: Figuring out how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

16. Strategic Planning Steps • Vision – reason and purpose for existing • Mission – major goals and performance objectives • Strategic Goals/Objectives – measureable and verifiable outcomes you intend to achieve • Action Plans - steps required to reach strategic goals/objectives – including who will do what, when and how. • Tactics - specific actions used to achieve the strategic goals and implement the strategic plan • Performance Measurement – how well did you do and how do you improve – Plan/Do/Check/Act

17. Business Planning

18. Forces you to objectively develop and evaluate your business idea. Helps you identify the opportunities and risks. Helps you understand the environment in which you operate, the strengths and weaknesses of your business, the competition, and the validity of your assumptions. You will understand who your customers are and how you can meet or exceed their needs and expectations. Why Do You Want A Business Plan?

19. Your Business Plan Should Be The Roadmap For Your Business

20. Not a Collector of Dust

21. Exporting

22. Tariffs Maybe Eliminated, But What About - • Transport Costs • Productivity Issues • Infrastructure Costs – electricity, Internet, etc. • Government Red-Tape • Labor Laws • General Cost of Doing Business in Your Country Compared to Other Countries • Currency Fluctuation

23. You Need the Following to Export To the US • Statistics - http://dataweb.usitc.gov/ • Harmonized Tariff Schedule - http://hts.usitc.gov/ • USDA Regulations – www.usda.gov • FDA Regulations – www.fda.gov • http://www.fda.gov/Food/LabelingNutrition/FoodAllergensLabeling/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ucm106187.htm

24. Crawl, Walk, Run Theory

25. Some Other Items • You Will Probably Only Get One Chance To Get It Right the First Time – Cannot Blow It • Can You Scale Up? • Almost as bad as no orders is an order that you cannot realistically handle

26. A Few Things to Remember • No Matter What the Conditions Are, Opportunities are Present • Do Not Forget the Basics of Business • Product/Financial Management/Marketing • Know What You Know and Know What You Do Not Know • Be Realistic

27. Thank You