Department of Commerce

Preparing Your Business for Global E-commerce Department of Commerce

Publisher Marketing: You've decided to start selling your products globally. Now you have an opportunity to market and sell them to the 95 percent of the world's population that lives outside the United States. But new opportunities bring new responsibilities-in this case complying with regulations, collecting additional information about your product, and managing new risks. Don't be discouraged. Thousands of small and medium-sized companies are thriving in the global marketplace. This book explains the information you'll need to complete international sales and how to integrate that information into your business operations from the very beginning of the sales-and-fulfillment process. This book draws on the experiences of businesses that are now exporting throughout the world; we've included their stories as case studies to help you export successfully. Retailers that sell online or via other consumer-direct platforms, such as phone or mail, to international customers will find this manual helpful, as will retailers that plan to fulfill several international orders daily or weekly. We'll explore the steps you'll need to take to prepare your business for going global, both in terms of operations and sales fulfillment. Before beginning these tasks, however, your business should conduct the proper steps for developing a new market or territory, such as creating a market-development plan, allocating proper resources, and ensuring senior-management buy-in.