In part one of this series, we built a long list of candidate markets and scored them for attractiveness. In part two, we put a credible number on the size of the opportunity in each one. Neither of those exercises, on their own, tells you whether a market is genuinely winnable, and this final post is where that question gets answered properly. This operational reality check is the final “initial gate” to pass when deciding which international market to enter.
This is the stage where a lot of plans that look promising fall apart, not because the market wasn’t attractive, but because you didn’t sit down and ask yourself whether the business could actually execute in it. A market can look perfect on paper and still be the wrong choice this year, because you don’t have the team bandwidth, the product fit, or the operational muscle to go after it well right now.
Table of Contents
Mapping the competitive landscape properly is a key step in assessing market potential overseas
Before you can judge whether you can win in a market, you need to understand who and what you’re actually up against, and that’s a broader question than most founders initially assume. It’s not just your direct competitors. You need a proper view of the whole ecosystem:
Direct competitors
both international and local. Who’s already established, what’s their market share, and how are they positioned?
Remember that a competitor at home might have different positioning in an overseas market relative to what you’re thinking of. That could be a strategic decision on their behalf, or also a sign that you have missed something in your research up until now…
Substitute offerings
that your customer might reach for instead, even if they don’t look like your obvious competition in your initial market entry evaluation criteria. A consumer choosing between an imported premium juice and a well-established local herbal drink is still making a substitution decision, even though the products look nothing alike on a shelf.
Likely competitor reaction.
If you enter successfully, how do you expect the incumbents to respond? Price cuts, a marketing push, a new product launch of their own?
In a seriously busy market you might be able to fly under the radar for a while as you won’t necessarily be perceived as competition from day 1, but in a highly concentrated market where one of your regular competitors has a dominant position, they might decide to try to squash you like a bug. (This happened to me in Turkey about 15 years ago, where a competitor had almost 70% market share and decided that the company I worked for entering the market was bad news and had to be stopped in our tracks. It didn’t work, but it caused me a lot of headaches and meant a lot of additional marketing expense.)
Potential partners.
Are there distributors, agents or retail partners already active in this category who might realistically take you on, and do they already carry a competitor’s range in a way that would rule them out? If you need to create the category from scratch then this is a heavy lift even if you prefer to enter a blue ocean market. On the other hand being the 99th brand of Italian pasta makes it tough to differentiate yourself even with a long history and brand story.
Distribution and retail channels.
What does the reseller landscape actually look like, and which channels are your competitors using most effectively? How and where is your category being sold?
When I worked in infant nutrition, there were markets where we sold mainly in “modern retail”, markets where formula was often sold in either drug stores or pharmacies, and markets where the main channel were specialised mom & baby stores or increasingly online… Of course that didn’t mean that we only sold in the dominant channel in a market, but always tried to address as many as possible, but you do have to decide where you can gain the most traction the most quickly when thinking about the factors influencing market selection.
Customer habits and budgets.
What are local preferences and switching costs, and how much customer education would your product need before it gets chosen over what’s already familiar? Which are the consumption occasions for your category of products? A typical breakfast food in one country, could be a snack in another.
Nothing beats in-country visits when you are deciding which international market to enter
Desk research will only get you so far with most of this. The single most valuable thing you can do, if you have the opportunity, is get out to the market and look at the shelves yourself, whether that’s on your own or alongside a potential distributor. Competitor packaging redesigns, new entrants, promotional activity and shelf space allocation all tell you things that no report will, and they’re usually the first sign of how genuinely contested a category is. If you want a fuller checklist for how to run this kind of visit properly, I’ve written about it in detail in my retail audit post, and it’s just as relevant when you’re scoping out a market for the first time as it is once you’re already trading there.
For example, the Philippines sells infant formula as a “pouch in box” whereas the rest of Asia uses cans. In some ways it doesn’t make sense in a humid climate and a country where logistics are not always gentle on products, but it makes the product more affordable. Now of course you could decide to enter with a can as it will make you stand out, but it will also increase the price premium on your product so as a producer you’re faced with the decision as to what is more important: your usual packaging or the usual price positioning. But it needs a compromise and desk research would just leave you thinking you’d missed some point.
Evaluating your ability to execute, (honestly) is half the win when deciding which international market to enter
This is the part founders most often skip, or do half-heartedly, because it means turning the analysis back on your own business rather than the market and it can be uncomfortable to face the facts. It doesn’t matter how attractive a market is if you genuinely don’t have the resources to manage it well, and this catches out ambitious teams eyeing up huge markets like China, the US or Brazil just as often as it catches out smaller businesses stretching themselves too thin.
At minimum, work through these honestly:
Product.
Will you need to adapt the product itself, not just the label, to meet local regulatory requirements or consumer preferences? Some markets expect frequent new product introductions, others are far more conservative about change, and knowing which you’re dealing with shapes your whole launch plan.
Does the product need additional certification? Are there recycling requirements in the country that you plan to export to?
Team.
Do you have the right leadership in place to actually drive this, or people who can be found and hired? Do your existing team members have real bandwidth to take this on, or will it simply get squeezed in around an already full workload, which is one of the most common reasons market entries stall.
It’s not just the export sales and admin teams who need to have the capability and the capacity, it’s also product management, the warehouse, the production planners, your regulatory and labelling specialists… It all adds up and it’s easy to think “oh, it’s just a quick label” but if you are planning a new market entry there could be a lot of work involved.
Resources.
Do you have the processes in place to deal with product changes, registrations, additional production requirements and complicated shipping requests?
Do you have the budget to handle the genuine costs of entry, and just as importantly, are you prepared to commit the time it takes? Product adaptation, registration costs, laboratory analyses, certification, marketing costs these all add up. This is worth being blunt about: in my experience across various sectors and markets, it typically takes nine to twelve months to bring a new distribution partner fully on board, from initial plan through to product actually on shelf, and it’s usually only in years three to five that orders start to properly mount up. If your internal expectations are set for faster returns than that, the mismatch itself becomes a risk, regardless of how good the market or the partner is.
Of course you can get lucky, but you have to plan for the worst case in terms of time and costs. You also need to consider the question of cash flow as that can kill your export operations if you don’t account for the longer lead times to receiving your cash.
If you need a factory audit then that can suck a massive amount of time and nerves from staff members who normally have no direct contact with international sales. Even a purely documentary registration process can test stretched teams to their limits.
Choosing your route to market
Ability to execute and route to market are tightly linked, because the right route for you depends entirely on what you’ve just been honest about above. Your main options include appointing an agent, working with a distributor, selling direct to consumers online, selling direct to retail, or in some cases a joint venture. For most food, beverage and mum and baby brands starting out, working with a local distributor tends to be the strongest option, since it gives you an insider’s view of the market and access to a network you simply don’t have yet, though direct-to-consumer e-commerce can work well for the right product and price point (but requires different levels of marketing capability).
Whichever route you’re weighing up, score it against the same lens you’ve just applied to your own capability. Direct retail and direct B2B sales both demand far more hands-on management from a distance than most new exporters expect, and that’s precisely the kind of operational reality that’s easy to underestimate from behind a desk at home. Many retailers refuse to work directly with smaller brands for exactly that reason – they’d prefer to work with a trusted existing partner who they know delivers on time and fulfils their logistics requirements rather than have to do the import work themselves.
Bringing the three stages together into a plan
By now you have three separate pieces of analysis: how attractive each market is, how big the realistic opportunity is, and how confidently you can execute in it. The job now is to bring all three into a single view, market by market, so the trade-offs between them are visible in one place rather than scattered across separate documents.
This is also the point where the risks and necessary trade-offs of choosing one market over another should be genuinely clear, not just to you, but to anyone else who needs to sign off on the decision, whether that’s a co-founder, a board, or an investor. It doesn’t automatically mean you have to enter whichever market comes out looking strongest on paper. There can be good reasons to make a different choice: timing, values alignment, or simply wanting to build experience in an easier market before tackling a harder one.
None of this is a one-off exercise, either. Markets shift, competitors move, and your own capacity changes as your business grows, so build in a habit of revisiting this analysis at least annually, ideally as part of your regular planning cycle.
A few final reality checks
Don’t confuse a good scorecard with genuine readiness. All the analysis in the world doesn’t substitute for an honest internal conversation about whether leadership is truly committed to seeing this through, not just excited about the opportunity in the abstract.
Budget more time (& money) than feels comfortable. Export timelines expand at almost every stage, from goods arriving later than expected to payment terms stretching further than they would domestically. Build that slack in now rather than discovering it under pressure later.
Values alignment matters more than it looks on a spreadsheet. If you’re a values-driven brand, your chosen market needs to genuinely align with those principles. It’s rarely visible on a balance sheet, but it matters increasingly to consumers, and a serious mismatch here can create problems that ripple back into your domestic market too.
That’s the full picture: attractiveness, opportunity size, and the operational reality of getting there. Taken together, these three stages give you a genuinely defensible basis for deciding which international market to enter next, built on evidence rather than gut feel, and a plan you can actually stand behind when someone asks you to justify it.
If you’d like support applying this framework to your own shortlist, a 30-minute International Clarity Call is a good place to start.
Thinking that working with a consultant would accelerate your international expansion?
If you’d like to learn more about working with me for support on your internationalisation projects or personal export knowledge, you can book a 30 minute international clarity call here.
If you haven’t already signed up for my free e-book about how to select which international market to enter next, you can do so here, or using the form below.
If you enjoyed this content please share it on social media or recommend it to your network.
Pin this post for later!
Kathryn firmly believes that business is done between people, and therefore places her focus on building strong relationships that form a solid foundation for doing business.
When she's not travelling around the world, Kathryn enjoys playing clarinet in her town's wind orchestra or sharing her love of the outdoors with her Scout group.
