Find out who really moves your category.
The map you need before the first email.
Most failed distributor searches were aimed at the wrong kind of company. In one market your product moves through technical wholesalers. In the next it goes through installers who buy direct, and the wholesalers are irrelevant. We work that out first.
The map you need before the first email.
The problem
You are guessing at a structure you cannot see from Shenzhen.
Every market moves goods differently, and the shape is invisible from outside. Approaching the wrong tier wastes months and burns the contacts you had.
The wrong tier
You pitch importers when the real decision sits with the installers who specify the product. They never had the authority to say yes.
The invisible middleman
A layer you did not know existed already takes a margin. Your price looked fine until you learned there were four hands in the chain, not two.
One market, one habit
What worked in Poland does not work in France. The channel that carries your category can differ across a border two hours away.
The honest part
You cannot check this yourself, and the internet will lie to you.
Directories list companies, not how business is actually done. The structure lives in the heads of people who work in that trade, and they only tell you once they know you.
- Company directories are stale, and they never say who has real buying power
- A distributor will not explain their own margin structure to a stranger
- Trade associations publish the polite version, not the working one
- Machine translation of a trade website hides exactly the nuance that matters
What we do
We draw the chain from the buyer backwards.
We start at the end, with whoever finally pays for your product, then work back through every company that touches it on the way.
Name the tiers
Importer, stockist, installer, integrator, direct. We set out which tiers exist in that market for your category and what each one is for.
Follow the margin
What each tier takes, and what is left for you. This is where most export plans quietly fail.
Locate the decision
Which tier actually chooses the brand. Sometimes it is not the one that writes the order.
Mark the blockers
Exclusive agreements, national buying groups, and the competitors already holding the shelf.
How a round runs
Four weeks, and you know how the market is wired.
We work from trade sources, our own people in market, and conversations with companies in the chain. You see the map as it takes shape, not only at the end.
Scope
We agree the market, the category, and how deep to go. Quoted firm before we start.
Desk work
Trade data, category structure, who is present, who is growing, who has just been bought.
Conversations
Our people talk to companies in the chain, in their language, as themselves.
The map
A written chain from buyer back to you, with the margin at each step and where you would enter.
We thought we needed an importer. It turned out the specifiers chose the brand and the importer just handled logistics. We had been pitching the wrong company for two years.
Questions
Answered plainly.
Is this the same as a market study?
No. A market study tells you how big the market is. This tells you how the goods physically and commercially reach the buyer, and where you could enter. It is a practical map, not a size estimate.
Can you do several markets at once?
Yes, and it is usually cheaper per market. Scope depends on your product and the markets in play. We agree it on the first call and quote it firm before any work starts.
What if the answer is that the market is closed?
Then we tell you, and we tell you why. Finding out in four weeks that a market is locked up by two incumbents is a good outcome. It is much cheaper than finding out after a year of travel.
Do we have to use you for the recruitment afterwards?
No. The map is yours. Some clients take it and work the channel with their own team. Others ask us to run the shortlist and the meetings next.
The first move
How does your category move?
Tell us what you make and the market you are looking at. If we already know that channel, we will tell you what we know on the call.