Service
In-Market Representation
Export markets rarely fail loudly. They go quiet in month four. Replies get slower, the reorder slips a cycle, and from Ontario it reads as normal until two quarters have gone. Nobody in Canada is placed to notice, because noticing means being in the market on an ordinary Tuesday.
What’s included
- A named point of contact in-market for your distributor and for the authorities
- Handling of regulatory correspondence, including renewals and requests that carry deadlines
- Distributor performance follow-up between your own visits, so a slipping reorder surfaces in weeks rather than quarters
- Early warning on regulatory change that affects your category
- Support at buyer meetings and trade events where you cannot attend
- Regular written reporting, so the market is visible from Canada
Commercial terms
- Fee range
- Scoped per engagement
- Typical timeline
- Confirmed at scoping
Questions
- Is this the same as appointing you as our agent?
- It depends how we scope it, and it matters legally. In some markets an agent has a defined status with consequences for registration holding and termination. We set out what we are and are not appointed to do, in writing, before starting.
- Can you hold our product registration?
- In some markets, and whether that is the right structure is a separate question: see Registration Ownership Structuring. It is sometimes the cleanest answer for a producer who cannot hold it directly and does not want the distributor to.
- How is this priced?
- As a retainer scoped to the markets and the workload. It is set with you at scoping rather than published, because the range between one market with one distributor and four markets with several is too wide for a useful number.
- Do you represent competing products?
- Not within the same category in the same market. Where a conflict would arise we say so before engaging, not afterwards.
Read before you brief us
The reasoning behind this work, written out in full and free to read. You will brief us better for having read it, and you may decide you do not need us for part of it.
- How Asian distributors evaluate a new Canadian brand
A distributor is deciding whether to spend their own money and shelf relationships on you. Understanding what that decision actually turns on, and which parts of it you control, is worth more than a better pitch deck.
- The list is not the hard part: what the Trade Commissioner Service does, and where it stops
Canada already runs a service that assesses a market for you and hands you a list of qualified distributors. Any adviser whose pitch is "we will find you names" is selling what you can ask Ottawa for. What the TCS covers, what it asks of you first, and the months after the list where entries stall.
Markets this covers
Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore