Funding for investment in Export

Question

Hi

We sell online (musical instruments and accessories) and are planning on expanding internationally so we have a local presence in many foreign countries. Obviously this costs reasonably substantial amount of money in translation costs.

We expect our sales to grow in the region of 50-100% from this initiative, which naturally will mean more staff.

Is anyone aware of any funding which would help toward any of the expansion?

Kind Regards
Mark

Answer

Hi Mark

We are a translation company who have just had our own website translated and we actually worked with UKTI who provided Export Vouchers which help with up to 50% funding for translation costs for your website, they can also help with funding for multilingual SEO.

Since we are also a translation services company we would be able to help with translating your website as this is one of our areas of expertise and a big growth area for us. In terms of pricing we are up to 50% cheaper than the bigger agencies and we also have an offer at the moment for 10% off for all new customers – additionally, we would be happy to negotiate on translation costs so we can find something that fits with your budget as we know it can become quite expensive otherwise.

Please do drop me a line if you would like to discuss further ([email protected])

Nicola

Answer

Firstly there are grants and government loans available for businesses that want to expand and they are as follows: www.ukbusinessgrants.org/grants or UK government Grants and loans funding centre 0800 0823 445 or if you wish to sell worldwide on ebay there is a grant from Kabbage.
For international leads there is an organisation called Kompass UK limited on 01342 778560
or 0800 0185 882 or fax them on 01342 327 940.
There are some websites that may or may not be useful www. musicregistry.com/frame.html
www.themusicnetwork.com/directory
www.growthaccelarator.com/
You could also try Music Mart-free classified ads
www.musicalads.co.uk
www.musicmart.co.uk
There is something called the Where on Earth Group. www.whereonearthgroup.com/free-internet-advertising-music-musical
There are many musical magazines that advertise like Gramophone, Bass, NME, Classic Pop just worth seeing if they do free advertising or even try LinkedIn have companies that are linked to music magazines and organisations.
This might sound a long shot but there is something called Business Search Service Trade, Trade Nosis .com If you put musical instruments and accessories in the search engine, it ill give you a list of organisations in Canada and the US go into them and see if they can assist you in anyway.
Rosa

Answer

Hi Mark

I’ve had a quick look at your website, which appears to be based on the Amazon platform. There is no reason why you couldn’t replicate this for international markets. (Clearly where Amazon has a significant presence). As a general rule, its likely to be harder to sell in an international market than in the UK. (e.g. you need to be able to handle distribution, fulfilment and aftersales). The translation element (comparatively) is the easy bit. I would suggest starting with a limited range of products, and targetting a single market to start with. If you do well, then reinvest from the profits. We translate regularly for both the Amazon and ebay platforms, and our translators use software which means they don’t have to retranslate lots of exact or close match phrases, this saves especially on e-commerce sites if you have lots of similar product descriptions. For Amazon we can translate directly in an Excel file which can then be uploaded, we can do the same for most content management systems.

There is no reason why you can’t set up your own site in a target language and country, but the tricky aspect is to get the correct SEO and site archetecture to get found in local search engines.

I agree that UKTI is a great source of advice and support, we’ve done both Passport to Export and Gateway to Global Growth, and both have been invaluable. Help with funding from UKTI is invaluable, but the advice and support is even more important.

Hope this helps.

Kindest regards

Mike

Export Action Plan