The international market-entry checklist
Questions to answer before you commit to a market, not after you have signed with a distributor.
Insights category
Global Expansion
Choosing markets, sequencing entry and building an expansion plan that holds up.
Most expansion decisions are made because an opportunity arrived rather than because a market was chosen. A distributor makes contact, a trade show produces interest, or a competitor moves first, and a market gets selected by circumstance.
This category covers the alternative: deciding where to go on the basis of your margin structure, your category position and what each market would actually require. It includes the readiness questions worth answering before committing to anywhere, how the candidate regions differ in practice, and how to sequence entry so compliance investment is made once and reused.
What this covers
- Choosing between candidate markets on evidence rather than opportunity
- The commercial readiness questions to answer before committing
- How margin structure, not market size, decides what is viable
- Sequencing entry across several markets
Articles
Global Expansion
Choosing your next market: how Australian brands should actually decide
The honest answer is that it depends on your margin structure, but the criteria that decide it are consistent, and most brands do not apply them.
Related
Where this applies
Guides and frameworks
Working documents you can have
Start with a conversation about your next market.
Tell us where you are trying to grow. We will tell you what the pathway looks like, what it would take, and whether we think the timing is right.