And not to where it is.
Wayne Gretzky’s famous quote on how he plays ice hockey is absolutely true to business as well. Especially so, in today’s seismic shifts that are happening in the global marketplace. To those in business in Canada and the US, this maxim is a surefire test for how their corporate growth plans have to be re-jigged.
Two years back, we did a project for a packaging company who were into food and beverage packaging printing and retail packaging printing. An SME who catered to the Canadian and US market, our client was a very successful business built over 30 years. Our mandate was to assess the market for similar products and services in India, to enable the client get a sense of ‘what’s in it for them’. A sort of dipping your toe into the water before wetting your feet. Not diving in mind you, if you get my drift.
For us at Rmagine, given that we are constantly scanning the market for trends and happenings across a variety of sectors, the answer was very evident. Just the packaged food industry growth potential in India should be good enough to plunge in. If you take in the retail explosion that is waiting to happen in India then the market for sophisticated packaging, just went ballistic.
So while we went about collecting all facts and did the research work, we stumbled upon a happening that was so telling. It showed how, really keen businesses sniff out opportunity- two years prior to our fact finding mission for our client, there was a huge business mission from the packaging industry that had already visited India. Hey, not from Canada or the US. The participants were some 80 print/packaging companies from across Europe who participated in a huge trade show in Delhi and travelled to the key cities in West and South India. And as a delegation they had met with some 250+ different potential Indian partners from different cities, to assess who would be right as a partner for them to enter the Indian market!
Here we are, trying to assess the market for our client and two full years prior to this, 80 competitors had had meetings with potential partners! Which means in the scheme of things on how long global market expansion projects take, those 80 competitors possibly have a four year head start on ‘skating to where the puck will be’.
So, we need to ask ourselves the one simple question, when it comes to deciding on tapping new markets globally- Is our business where the puck is OR are we skating to where it will be?
Rmagine 