Amazon is the biggest online marketplace outside of China. It is also the ecommerce platform with the largest global footprint.

Many companies of all sizes are using Amazon to reach more customers online. There are more than two million third-party sellers on the Amazon marketplace worldwide, generating about 50% of Amazon’s total sales.

When merchants think about Amazon, the first thing that comes to mind is using the platform to increase sales through their massive audience. Of course, Amazon is a great channel to do that, but for small businesses Amazon can offer a lot more.

For SMEs who are just beginning to explore international markets, Amazon provides the tools and support they will need to succeed. These tools, such as Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), greatly simplify the operational and financial processes required for international selling.

Solving the warehousing headache for SMEs

My husband has run a small international trade and marketing business in Canada for over seven years. Last year, he decided to expand to the U.S. A critical step was finding the right warehouse to store and ship products –a simple enough task. He never would have predicted what a big headache this would become.

He knew he needed a warehousing partner with strong technological capabilities, yet most of these providers were orientated towards serving businesses with huge volumes.

By contrast, FBA is remarkably accessible to small merchants, all the while providing first-in-class technology.

It allows SMEs to ship their goods directly to Amazon, which will store the goods in their warehouses and ship them for you directly when customers order them. Compared to many third-party fulfilment services, FBA is affordable, scalable and efficient.

Amazon currently operates in 11 global marketplaces: United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, China and India. There are over 100 Amazon fulfilment centers worldwide. If you are planning to expand your local business into one of these markets, Amazon can help you get started.

You can gather market intelligence quickly with Amazon Global Selling

We’re all aware of how complicated international business can be. Apart from fulfilling your orders, considerations such as import taxes, customs duties, currency exchange, regional regulations, language barriers and local cultures can all add more complexity to selling your products in international markets.

For small businesses with capital constraints and lower risk tolerance, Amazon’s Global Selling, combined with FBA services, allow them to enter a new market and test out products with minimal investment and risk.

Before you make the decision to enter a target market, you must conduct some market research to ensure your product is sellable in the region.

Amazon Global Selling is stepping in to help companies find the information they need to sell to the right markets.

“Sellable” often means your product is in compliance with the target country’s regulations and specifications, but that’s not enough. Say you’re a North American manufacturer of electronic devices, and you decide to sell your products in Japan. You re-work your existing products to meet Japan’s electrical specifications, only to discover there is no demand for that product in the region.

Are you selling customers what they want?

“Sellable” means that, in addition to compliance, there must be consumer demand in the target market. This is where Amazon can help you ascertain whether your product is sellable or not by providing valuable market intelligence on a wide range of product categories. For example, you can search by keyword to see the best sellers in specific product categories. You can also drill down to look at customer reviews to better understand which product features local customers prefer.

It is often difficult for a small business to know which products customers truly want. Testing different designs only yields meaningful results if the sample size of the customer base is large enough to be statistically significant, yet that’s rarely the case at the small business level. This challenge is further compounded when a small business attempts to enter a foreign market.

This is where Amazon’s massive scale creates a special opportunity. Amazon gives small businesses access to enough customers that they can test new designs to discover what the market really wants. In the past, only large companies such as multinationals had the research budgets to collect this type of intelligence, but now such information is at the fingertips of even the humblest merchants.

Amazon helps set your pricing too

Amazon’s global marketplace also helps you select the right price for your products in each market. Apart from taxes, duties, currency exchange and cost of living in the target country, you also have to consider the cost of shipping, returns and customer support. All of these will affect the profitability of your products in the target marketplace. Thus it is often hard to determine what the right price is for your products in a new international market.

By using FBA, you can easily calculate the fulfilment fees, including storage, picking, packing, shipping and returns. By adding these costs to your product cost and comparing your estimated price to similar products in the target market, you can determine whether or not you will be profitable at your target price.

You can also test your price on Amazon by observing if customers are buying. If the customers are buying at the set price you can set your product price accordingly for other channels in the target market.

Manage your inventory more efficiently with Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment

After you have entered an international market successfully, you may decide to expand your business into channels other than Amazon. You may get sales orders from your own website, other third-party online platforms, catalogue sales, distributors or sales agents. You can utilize Amazon’s Multi-Channel Fulfillment service, which is an optional FBA feature, to help you manage your inventory and fulfil customers’ orders from other sales channels.

Amazon will fulfill your sales orders from the same inventory pool and handle customer returns the same as sales directly from Amazon.

This will save you the trouble and operational costs in managing cross-channel inventory so that you will have a more efficient and cost effective central distribution point.

In addition, Amazon also provides customer service in the language of the target marketplace to handle customer inquiries about your FBA orders. This represents a significant cost savings, as it can be very expensive for small businesses to hire additional local staff to handle customer service.

Amazon promotions can help you take care of marketing online

We all know how important marketing and promotion is in selling, especially when entering a new market where there is no brand recognition for your products. It is very hard to generate organic search results and improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) when you are new to the market.

Instead of paying big money to marketing consultants, you can use Amazon’s affordable promotional tools as a cost-effective way to build brand awareness of your product in a new country.

Just as SEO is essential for on-line marketing, Amazon’s search ranking is equally important. Amazon ranks products according to its own algorithm, which is a combination of sales volume and customer reviews, so it’s important for companies to do what they can to improve their visibility within Amazon search results.

Amazon’s promotional tools, such as Free Delivery, Money Off, Buy One Get One, and Pay-per-Click Ads, are invaluable. These tools enable you to run promotions for your products when you first list them and your search rankings are low.

Now it’s your chance to get started in a new market

Although there is no guarantee of success, there are many benefits of using Amazon Global Selling and FBA to get a head start in a new market.

The free market intelligence will make you familiar with the target market trends and demands, and the predictable and low overhead will reduce your operational costs and ensure profitability. The scalability will mitigate some risks of capital investment, while the customer service and automation of picking, packing and shipping will free you up to focus on growing your business. Amazon’s promotional tools will also help you build brand awareness in your new market.

Are you planning to expand your small business internationally? Why not get started on Amazon?

However, when you decide to take advantage of the global supply chain to build your business, there will inevitably be challenges along the way. Knowing how to manage your international vendor relationships becomes key to ensuring your international business sails smoothly.

Unlike arm’s length transactions, building international vendor relationships is a long-term strategy that needs to be enriched and maintained on an ongoing basis.

In 2009, my husband and I started our own small international business. Since then we have developed some successful partnerships with our overseas suppliers, yet at the same time we have also had some frustrating experiences.

I would like to share some painful but formative lessons we have learned along the way that could be valuable to your start-up international business.

1. Never underestimate the importance of relationships

First of all, you have to be mentally ready to engage in an international relationship. Being open-minded and understanding of cultural differences is a prerequisite.

As my husband once said:

Understanding culture is not about knowing when to bow or how to eat the food, it’s about appreciating your partner’s worldview enough to anticipate how they might be inclined to perceive you and your actions.

Ultimately you can only put yourself in that person’s shoes if you have some feeling for the life experiences that person has had before they encountered you.

For instance, you don’t have to speak Chinese in order to do business with people in China.

English is an international language and any Chinese companies which trade internationally will have people who can communicate in English proficiently.

The obstacle is not the language; rather, it’s the way people think about business problems and how these ideas influence their conduct.

2. Don’t lose focus as you make your first steps

China is a fast-growing economy and, as such, the rapid pace of business development often brings about problems. Sometimes, people only focus on the final results, while paying less attention to details and quality.

This is especially true for new companies and SMEs that often lack the resources to cope with unforeseen challenges.

So when you first start doing business with Chinese companies, you have to be patient, flexible and forgiving; even though you know the outcome may be less than ideal, you must be willing to give it a try.

It may take multiple attempts to get a product right, but it’s possible for those who are persistent.

3. Take the time to choose your future suppliers carefully

Once you’re mentally ready, it’s time to find the right suppliers for your business. It’s much harder to find the right suppliers overseas than locally.

Sometimes you may need to take an overseas business trip, but even visiting a lot of factories in person will not guarantee success. Conducting plenty of research beforehand is of absolute importance.

Your choice of country shouldn’t depend on your own preference. It should be based on a country’s competitive advantage.

For example, many textile products in North America were produced in China during the 1990s, because of the abundance of low-cost labour and the technological capabilities of China’s textile industry.

However, as labour costs in China have increased in recent years, more and more textile companies have shifted their manufacturing from China to other developing countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia.

This shift means, compared to other countries where labour is less expensive, China no longer enjoys an overwhelming competitive advantage in the textile industry.

When it comes to choosing the right suppliers, it’s important to narrow down your choices and qualify your options based on a set of criteria.

For example, the quality of a company’s website, trade references, product samples, and communication are all important indicators for qualifying a potential supplier.

A third party’s onsite evaluation or factory audit can often save you the expensive costs of an overseas visit.

4. Plan ahead to ensure the quality your customers demand

Finding the right supplier is only the first step towards a successful international vendor relationship. There are also many risks associated with long distance relationships.

One of the biggest risks, in my opinion, is quality control. It’s important to articulate clear specifications and standards to your suppliers.

Equally important is your willingness and ability to foresee and pre-emptively mitigate any problems that might occur.

It’s crucial to insist that pre-production samples be delivered to you prior to production. Hiring a third-party agency to perform a quality inspection during production and/or before shipment is an effective way to ensure products meet specifications.

Be sure to inform your supplier of the inspection before they start production, as this will make them more cautious during production.

5. Reduce risk by diversifying your suppliers, but not at the expense of building trust

As mentioned earlier, building successful international relationships requires a long-term commitment. At the same time, it’s very risky if you only have one supplier for your key product lines. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

It’s necessary to have more than one supplier, especially in an unstable economy. Your key supplier could go out of business in a year or even a month.

This has happened to us several times over the years. Each time we had to start all over again to find and qualify a new supplier. Therefore, it’s smart to have at least one other supplier as a backup.

Although having multiple suppliers is important in managing risks, reducing the number of suppliers and focusing on your key supplier will help you build and manage a long-term relationship.

Just as you evaluate your suppliers, your suppliers will evaluate you as a customer. Overseas suppliers often assess their customers based on the importance to their business.

If your business is of significance to your supplier, they will value you as an important partner.

Keeping your promises, such as consistently paying on-time, is one of the ways you prove to your supplier that you are a good customer with whom it’s worth building a relationship.

Although it takes a lot of time and effort, developing and building trust is not only worthwhile ­­­– it’s absolutely critical to your success.

6. A strong contract can help prevent expensive legal disputes

The reality is that disputes can and will happen even with your best suppliers.

To resolve an international dispute through legal means is much more complicated and expensive than with domestic disputes. Most of the time, it’s easier to negotiate and settle disputes privately rather than through legal action.

That said, you should always have some sort of contract in place in order to set clear expectations.

Once a purchase order (PO) is accepted, it becomes a simple but effective form of contract between a buyer and a seller. Any terms and conditions should be stated clearly in your PO to your supplier to avoid the possibility of a dispute.

Again, an understanding of cultural differences plays an important role in avoiding and settling disputes. Sometimes, there is a way to find a win-win solution to minimize the harm for both parties.

There are many more strategies and tactics in managing international vendor relationships which you will learn through experience.

All in all, having an open-minded and understanding approach is essential for small businesses interested in building relationships with international vendors.

What have your experiences with international vendors been like? How can you apply these lessons to your current or future vendor relationships?

As a former student in a FITT-accredited program and a recipient of the FITT Diploma in International Trade, I know how important socio-cultural factors are in doing business internationally. There is much emphasis in the FITT courses on the cultural dimensions of international trade.

Reflecting on my own experiences, I would agree entirely that being prepared for cross-cultural differences will help with growing your international business more smoothly.

Taking the first step in building cross-cultural bridges

Growing up in China—a relatively homogenous society—I had little understanding of other cultures when I was young. Not having interacted with people from other cultures, my mental universe was largely influenced by China’s mainstream media. In my mind, I clearly divided people in the world into two groups: Chinese and “foreigners”.

As for “foreigners”, they were all the same to me no matter whether they were from Europe, North America or elsewhere in the world. I used to hold stereotypes about “foreigners” being individualistic, capitalistic and somewhat arrogant.

It was not until I graduated from college and got the opportunity to work with some non-Chinese colleagues from Canada, Australia and Japan that I realised “foreigners” were not all the same. I could tell that my Canadian colleagues were different from my colleagues from Australia in many aspects, despite the fact that they spoke the same language.

It was also around this time that I started to break away from my former stereotyped thinking and began to open up my mind.

Being open minded is the first step in breaking the ice of cross-cultural differences.

Every time I get an opportunity to interact with people from other cultures, I listen and observe carefully.

Adjusting  my cultural mindset to a new environment

In 2008, I moved to the United States. It was my first time in North America, and I was amazed by the diversity of American society—no wonder America is called a multi-cultural “melting pot.”

However, soon after I settled in the USA, I realized that within this “melting pot” there was one dominant culture with many sub-cultures, of which people in the dominant culture seemed to have little understanding. Just like myself when I was young, I met many people who tended to have stereotypes toward so-called “outsiders.”

When I lived in the USA, I had a short contract job helping a local American company prepare for a meeting with a group of Chinese prospects. This was a big deal because these were the very first customers from China for the American company, and the main purpose of the Chinese people’s visit was to do a quality inspection. As this was the first time for the American company to do business with China, the American managers were grappling with the cultural differences between America and China.

Cultural concepts and misconceptions can affect business

During the inspection, the American company served tea and donuts as refreshments for the Chinese visitors. Things went well in the morning, and it was time for lunch so they ordered pizza for a quick solution. Right after lunch, the Chinese inspectors returned to their inspection work.

Things became complicated in the afternoon as the Chinese inspectors questioned the specifications and seemed fussy. The American engineer answered their questions thoroughly, but not to the satisfaction of the Chinese inspectors. One of the inspectors said to me that they didn’t feel they were respected, as the company didn’t provide the original engineering drawing.

I soon realized that it was not because of the engineering drawing that made them feel neglected; rather it was the fact that the owner of the American company hadn’t spent much time entertaining them.

From the American company’s perspective, they didn’t want to interrupt the inspection with a lengthy meal, as the managers wanted to finish the inspection as quickly as possible. However, in Chinese culture, business is not just about business, it’s more about people and relationship building.

Especially as a customer visiting a supplier, the Chinese visitors wanted to feel valued and respected.

I explained this aspect of Chinese culture to the American factory owner, and he took my advice with understanding. At the end of the day, he invited the Chinese party for dinner. During the meal, he shook hands with every inspector and made a toast to thank them for their hard work. He even gave them a book written about the history of the factory to better acquaint them with the American company.

I could see that the Chinese visitors were happy that night, and that was the start of a good international business relationship!

Make an effort when it comes to culture, and build positive business relationships

Making efforts to build a good relationship will help establish trust. Business in America is often “just business”.

However, when doing business with high-context cultures such as China, companies should be more aware of the different cultural aspects. It is especially crucial when doing business for the first time.

As a co-founder of a small business importing consumer goods from overseas, I have dealt with many overseas suppliers over the years. Some of our partnerships with suppliers did not last long, while others have persisted from the very beginning until now.

At the end of the day, you can only continue doing business with people you trust.

Here are some rules of thumb we can bear in mind when it comes to doing business across cultures:

• Do not make assumptions or follow stereotypes
• Be open-minded and willing to learn about other cultures
• Do your homework on the target culture
• Respect not only cultural differences but also individuality
• Find appropriate ways to build trust

A trustworthy relationship is built on mutual understanding and, like any relationship, takes time and commitment to get right.

Don’t you think this is the right way to do business anyway? How has cultural understanding helped with growing your international business?

The most important thing in the job hunting process is to identify your career goal or objectives first, and start to get ready early. Having my career goal set up long before I started the program, I knew I wanted to work for a company involved in international trade.

Getting ready for the job hunt

First, I worked to focus my resume around my career objectives. As we all know, a professional resume is key to attracting potential employers. I also fully utilized all the career services that Fanshawe College offered. Attending resume improvement and interview workshops, learning about major job searching websites and consulting career advisers got me in the right mindset and prepared me for the process.

Second, networking activities are also essential when we look for jobs. I treated every networking event as an opportunity to present myself in front of potential employers. I also made sure I was fully prepared before going to any networking event by researching about the companies that were present, dressing professionally and preparing well-written resumes and name cards. In this way, I decided on the potential employers that I wanted to meet, and when I talked to them, I could ask meaningful questions and showcase how my skills would be an asset to the company. That was how I made my first recruitment contact at StarTech.com, where I eventually landed a job and embarked on my new career.

Acing the interview

The most critical step is, of course, the interview.

Being well-prepared is the most important thing for a successful interview.

I received excellent advice from my professor and mentor, Professor Murray Morgan, who said that I should “treat the interview as a research project.” Fortunately, my interview happened during my Spring break, so I had enough time to prepare. I did thorough research on the company’s business and made sure I understood the skills and qualities they were looking for in a candidate. I also came up with a list of questions they might ask me during the interview, and I prepared my answers in advance. It was also helpful that I had prepared some questions about the position to ask toward the end of the interview. Afterwards, I followed up by immediately thanking them for the interview and expressing my continued interest in working for the company.

Finding a job is not easy. Like everything in life, we need to put a lot of effort into the process and treat it seriously. The truth is that finding a job is only the first step towards starting a successful career. There is much to learn on the job, and one must learn as quickly as possible in order to adapt successfully to the new role and work environment.

Adapting to being on the job

It’s been almost ten months since I started my job, and I have been able to apply what I have learned from the international business program to many areas of my work. For example, the Global Supply Chain Management course gave me the foundation that I needed for effective and efficient inventory planning. The Legal Aspects of International Trade course made me aware of different regulations and rules of importing and distributing products overseas, which is the core business activity of my employer.

I’m grateful to have started my career in international trade, but there have been many challenges along the way. Although I have lived and worked in four different countries over the past ten years—including China, Thailand, USA and Canada—I still needed to adapt to the workplace as a newcomer to Canada. Every company has its unique corporate culture and special operating systems. I had a lot to learn in the beginning, and I sometimes felt a little overwhelmed during my first month on the job. However, I kept a positive and open mentality, and as each day went by, I felt the job getting easier as I learned more and more about the company and its operations.

Apart from the new operating systems I needed to learn, I also recognized how good communication and interpersonal sensitivity are crucial when working in an environment as diverse as Startech.com. As a recent immigrant from China, I took it on myself to better understand and appreciate Canadian culture. Soon enough, I found that I could communicate effectively with my co-workers, and I never hesitate to ask questions when there is something that I don’t know or understand.

I believe that positive thinking, open-mindedness, and an eagerness to learn and work hard are essential to success for any student who wants to start a successful career in international business.

Are you ready to embrace the challenge and start your journey towards a successful career in international business?