Agents Help To Open Up Overseas Markets

"When choosing agents and distributors, they should decide their exclusive agency, exclusive agent or distributor's qualification according to their strength and sales ability."

In the recent expansion of overseas markets, when facing the choice of how to cooperate with agents, Chen Shan, deputy general manager of import and export of standard sewing machine group company, said that it would vary from place to place, such as the exclusive agent in Eastern Europe, whose business covers Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and other countries.

Exclusive agents were also used in India.

In many other areas, distributors are the main ones.

It is understood that since the late 1980s, the standard group began to build overseas sales channels while expanding the international market.

So far, the company has built a huge sales network worldwide, with more than 100 exclusive agents and distributors. The sales network extends to every corner of the world except central Africa.

In this process, the strength of local agents has been used to achieve good sales results.

Industry experts point out that China's production oriented export enterprises can only rely on import and export companies to make foreign trade in the era of planned economy. Now they have the ability to set up their own distribution channels. "Agents are familiar with the local market, and generally have a wealth of sales network. An excellent agent can save a lot of cost for the company in developing overseas markets."

Chen Shan emphasizes the concept of "big market" in the operation of the company -- to plan and operate the whole world as a market.

But overseas agents and distribution networks also pose many challenges to the manufacturers in terms of management.

After all, there is a big difference between the overseas market and the domestic market.

The establishment of overseas sales network, though able to pplant some successful experiences in China, is still very difficult to implement.

First of all, agents and distributors are not their internal staff after all. They do not necessarily fully understand the strategy and direction of development of enterprises.

Plus any business is to chase profits, and how to cultivate their loyalty is a difficult problem.

"It is useless to talk simply about great principles. We must take what we convince the other party to solve practical problems."

Chen Shan gave an example: a product of the standard group was selling well in India, but later found that there were some problems in the quality, so the company asked local agents to stop selling.

But quality problems can not be solved in the short term, and dealers threaten to sell similar products of other brands.

Later, after consultations between the two sides, we agreed to use another product introduced by standard group as an alternative. This will not only reduce the loss of the agents, but also promote the new products of the manufacturers.

Because of the differences in language habits, cultural backgrounds and market environment, district regulation is necessary.

To this end, the standard group divides export management into 4 service sectors, which are in Asia Pacific, Europe and America, Middle East and Africa.

Due to the development of the distribution network and the increase of its membership, the company is preparing to move the function supervision center to the target market and carry out the "zero distance" management of the local sales network.

After the establishment of the sales network, the company can not therefore think that everything is fine and must carry out the necessary brand promotion.

After setting up a global sales network, the standard group still invested huge ads in world famous resources such as global resources.

Chen Shan thinks there are three advantages.

One is to create brand image and increase the confidence of distribution network.

The two is to hand over queries from all over the world to local distributors and support them to gain more business opportunities.

The three is through the inquiry of local terminal customers, manufacturers can more directly understand the latest trends in the local market.

According to the insiders, the abolition of textile quotas not only brings development opportunities to China, but also brings development opportunities for textile and garment production enterprises in other countries and regions.

It is certain that under the premise of the increasing demand of the textile market, the demand gap caused by the limitation of our textile export will be compensated by the textiles in other regions. Besides, the textile trade friction will make the enterprises go faster and more resolutely.

This will inevitably increase the demand for sewing equipment.

It is pointed out that for the textile and garment industry of the third world countries, the cost advantage of China's sewing equipment is very obvious. These emerging markets will bring more room for development of China's sewing equipment.

Under such circumstances, sewing enterprises are in the ascendant to scramble for overseas markets. Whoever masters overseas channels will be able to seize the opportunity.

"Made in China" breaks through the low price strategy and expands overseas markets with new products, partners, channels and communication strategies.

"From a main distribution channel to a combined distribution channel with customers."

Experts believe that this may be a trend.