If you want to sell goods overseas, a little help on the ground is needed

Working with a distributor in another country may be awkward but it’s easier than trying to deal directly with retailers overseas — a lesson jeweller Anna Louise Trent learnt from experience.

Her business, Anna Lou of London, supplies some of Britain’s best-known shops, but a UK trade mission six years ago showed that her kawaii range — Japanese for cute or adorable — had real potential in Japan as well.

At that stage her business was still small, but she found a distributor who secured concessions in two big Japanese department stores. Then things hit a brick wall. “The concessions did very well but the distribution company was not really big enough to expand things beyond that,” said Trent, 37

See the full article – Times Article Dec 28th 2014

or read online at the Sunday Times here