62 INTERNATIONAL TRADE


LOOKING THE EXPORTERS:


David Lenehan - Northern Industrial John Carr - Cheese Matters Nick Dykins - Slingco Hakeem Adebiyi - Vernacare Paul May - Universal Smart Cards


OVER THE HORIZON


Nick Dykins, Slingco


Slingco designs and manufactures products for cable and conductor installation, support and protection.


The Queens Award for International Trade is a nice thing to get and internally it is a big thing. Awards are good for the motivation of your staff.


We won our second award in the middle of lockdown. I sent a text message round to all our staff to let them know and got a message from one of our production team saying, ‘I’m so proud of our company’. I said, ‘that actually means more to me than winning the award’ and it did.


It can help build relationships and may be a benefit in certain parts of the world. Beyond that, being a successful exporter is about how easy you can make life for people.


You have got to make it easy. If you are 7,000 miles away from a customer that is your problem not theirs.


Paul May, Universal Smart Cards


I am delighted to have been invited by DiT to join the ‘export champions’ they have around the country.


I’m happy to share my experience and how we have been successful in exporting with new exporters.


The thing I really wanted to say is have a plan. That is absolutely the way ahead. It says, ‘this is what we want to do, this is the market we want to attack’.


We have just started selling into Mexico. I always enjoy exporting, the stories, and the nature of overseas work, rather than selling in your local territory.


I’d also say get help; it is a well-worn path. We’ve been trading as human beings for thousands of years.


Don’t reinvent the wheel. Go and find out how to do it from other people who do it well.


David Lenehan, Northern Industrial


Last year we exported to 132 countries, we sell all over South America and Africa. We’ve grown that from exporting to Ireland 12 years ago.


It has been an almost painless organic growth. We have a website where we sell our parts. We analysed the site and where business was coming from.


It showed a lot of business coming from Italy. The first thing we did was translate the site into Italian and then we employed an Italian speaker. We are also in Mexico and we’re opening in Germany soon.


It is easy to export these days. You can sell your product on eBay and start to find out where the demand is worldwide.


Customers want a good experience and it doesn’t matter where we are from. It’s a global marketplace, you can export anywhere in the world but so can someone in Japan. So, we must be good and offer value.


I’d say just do it, go for it. Don’t think about it too much, just give it a blast and see what happens.


Hakeem Adebiyi, Vernacare


Sometimes we overthink the idea of exporting. Generally taking baby steps is the way to do it.


As we started selling into other markets, other markets started talking to us and we built a more global footprint.


We started our export journey over 25 years ago and started taking exporting more seriously in 2014-15. At that time exports amounted to five to 10 per cent of our overall turnover. Today they account for about 40 per cent of our business.


It has been an exciting journey over the last five or six years to grow that. We use a lot of distributors.


They work hard and invest considerably before they start to see real results. The highlight is when they have gone through that process and their sales are excelling.


You need to make careful choices and that covers a wide range of things, from your distributers to the business model you use in these countries and your customers. We’ve probably all had the experience of not being paid.


John Carr, Cheese Matters


As cheese exporters we quickly realised that Brexit was going to happen and we needed a bridge across to the EU.


In 2019 we set up our own fully-owned subsidiary in Holland. In the first three months of the year, we have made 150 to 200 exports into the EU and all our customers have got their cheese on time.


Every shipment has an extra cost of around £700 compared to pre- Brexit. At the moment, we have to absorb some of that cost and our customers are absorbing some of it. It is a learning process.


As exporters it is always nice when you are at a trade show and somebody turns up and it eventually ends in business.


We did our final trade show before lockdown just over a year ago and were approached by an organic importer in Holland. It has taken us about nine months to get there but we’re now an exporter of organic cheese into Holland.


When we first started exporting everybody told me the customer’s problem is your problem, so solve it.


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