Global Market Expansion: Strategies and Considerations With Andy Hooper of Global E-commerce Experts

Andy Hooper is the CEO of Global E-commerce Experts, which provides end-to-end solutions for ecommerce brands expanding to Europe. He has been growing organizations in business development, consultancy, sponsorship, and coaching since 2006 across a range of industries and global locations. With a key focus on data, coaching conversations, and strategy, Andy is a dynamic leader who encourages teams and individuals to reach their full potential.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[3:02] The mistakes ecommerce brands make when expanding to a new market
[6:39] What are the benefits of international market expansion?
[8:17] Andy Hooper explains his company’s seven-step process for brands expanding to Europe
[14:37] How to translate products during the extension process
[22:18] The importance of developing international trademarks in a marketplace
[24:49] Andy’s most significant learning experience and his advice for overcoming growth

In this episode…

Global market expansion is a profitable method for scaling your ecommerce brand, yet many entrepreneurs lack the strategies to launch their products into a new market. So, how can you extend your brand internationally?

Andy Hooper advises businesses to establish a framework for successful expansion. This includes researching your ideal market, demonstrating product and brand compliance, developing a launch strategy, navigating warehousing and logistics, promoting your products, and creating a website. It’s also necessary to translate your products and pricing to leverage your marketplace effectively. By implementing a multi-tiered strategy, you can generate traffic from a range of audiences.

Tune in to this episode of the eCommerce Profits Podcast as Joshua Chin sits down with Andy Hooper, CEO of Global E-commerce Experts, to discuss preparing your brand for international expansion. Andy explains the mistakes brands make when expanding to a new market, the benefits of international expansion, and how to translate products during the expansion process.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency.

If you are a direct-to-consumer ecommerce brand that wants to unlock the optimum customer lifetime value through email marketing, then look no further than Chronos Agency!

Our team of passionate email marketing experts has helped hundreds of brands generate over $70 million in return from email alone, and our clients receive an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts.

Chronos Agency has worked with a variety of brands, including Truly Beauty, Alya Skin, and many more. Our mission is to help real businesses achieve real results.

If you want to take your revenue to the next level using email marketing, be sure to email our team at sales@chronos.agency or visit chronos.agency to learn more.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:04

Welcome to the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top founders and experts in the ecommerce Industry and take an in depth look at their struggles and successes and growing ecommerce brands profitably.

Joshua Chin 0:18

Hey guys, Josh Chin here and most of the eCommerce Profits Podcast, where we feature top experts and entrepreneurs in the ecommerce Industry. And we go behind the scenes of the struggles and successes in growing a brand. Now this episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency. If you run a direct to consumer ecommerce brand that is ready to scale and to double your customer lifetime value, true lifecycle marketing Chronos is your company. We’ve helped hundreds of brands scale profits with email, SMS, and mobile push marketing, while getting an average of 30 500% ROI from our efforts, we’ve worked with brands like truly beauty, Elias Skin to Udi and many more. Now the next step is to email us at sales@Chronos.agency just mentioned you heard about us through our podcast, or you can go to Chronos.agency to learn more. Today’s guest is Andy Hooper, and Andy is the CEO of Global E-commerce Experts Limited. The company supports clients from all around the world to expand their businesses into the EU markets, which is really interesting. Lots of dive into with a sole focus on ecommerce sellers with a series of services, including VAT compliance, Threepio services, account management, social media product development, and consultancy around expansion of businesses into the elusive market of, of Europe. So the EU is really interesting. Because traditionally, especially with US based ecommerce brands, we’re often looking at expansion within the country itself. But when you look beyond the across the pond, so to speak, you see a lot more potential that’s latent in the in an environment where perhaps competition isn’t as crazy and he might want to share a little bit more of a competition out there. And Andy has been growing organizations in various different capacities and different industries. He’s had an amazing, illustrious career, and many different types of businesses, which is really interesting outside of work, and he is a keen wind surfer and water sports enthusiast. Andy, welcome to the show.

Andy Hooper 2:42

Thanks very much. Thanks for having us. It’s great to be here.

Joshua Chin 2:45

My pleasure. And first question for you. Why is it so difficult for businesses to penetrate the EU market, especially coming from other English speaking countries? What are some of the common blind spots that people have?

Andy Hooper 3:02

I think that the first thing is that people overcomplicate things. So when you’re looking to expand into a new market, I mean, Europe has 560 million people. So when you look at the total possible reach audience, market share, whatever you want to call it, the number of people that you can actually get your product in the hands of is a significant number of people far outweigh some of the other markets that sellers actually expand into. But what happens is, is that when you’re not based in that region, you you put obstacles in the way as to why it’s complicated, why it’s difficult, why that you shouldn’t do it. And there’s a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t do something. And a lot of that is because you perceive where you’re currently doing something as easy, or, or where you’re currently doing it makes life a little bit easier. Because if you already list a, as you said, de Josh, you know, if you’re already selling in the North American market, and you don’t feel that you’ve fully penetrated that market, yet, you’ve still got some expansion to go. You know, you’re thinking, well, I need to solve this piece first. But what happens is, is that you I’ll give you a great example, one of our clients, they were all prior to being one of our clients, I should say, they were selling some amazing products, online electrical products. And what happened was they were selling these great products, all in the North American market. They’re building this really big brand. They were nine figures. They were really, really moving fast forwards. And they said to us well, yeah, well, you know, we’re not sure we want to expand there’s lots of difficulties. I’m not sure we’ve got the time I’m not sure this not sure we’ve got that and all we’ve done is put a lot of hurdles in the way and the reason that a lot of hurdles in the way is because, quite honestly they were more focused on the current market rather than looking at what could happen if somebody else entered the market with their product. But of course, then what happened was the product was being made in China, the factory that was making their product decided that, well, they’re not selling in Europe, we will. And then what happened is, they started selling their product in Europe. And what happened was, is good, that product started really selling really, really well, you know, and all of a sudden, the brand in the North American market is now losing, you know, eight figures every year, because they hadn’t expanded the brand. Right? Now, it depends on what your you were, your thought process is as a brand, right? If you want to grow that brand significant, you need a global brand in today’s market. And in order to do that, you need to make sure that someone doesn’t take your brand and launch it in Europe instead of you. Yeah. So I think that you put a lot of people put hurdles in the way, which is where we come in, obviously, to solve all of those and make that easy. But realistically, it’s down to the people who are running that business to decide, do we want our brand to be sold by somebody else in Europe? Or do we want to do it now? Or product? I say brands, you know, there’s a whole load of infringements you need to discuss think about that.

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