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Export services to Europe | Europe – All in One

 1080 720 Bosnakis Ioannis
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Your Exports to Europe – All in One

If you are interested to develop exports to Europe, Axis Blueschild are the specialised export consultants for the European markets. We offer a new, unique service called “Exports Europe – All in one”. With this service package we support our clients in their export development in currently 17 important markets of West and South Europe through one partnership.

Complete service for your exports to Europe

With our innovative export service solution you dont´t have to search and to manage representatives in every European market. Your company will develop exports to European markets with one partnership with Axis Blueschild.
With our export service for the European markets you minimize development time, development costs and administration costs.
We operate in each European market with our local teams, securing market development from the inside. This means that we operate close to buyers and consider on local market characteristics. With our market development from inside we increase performance and prospects of success for your exports to European markets.

The challenges in developing exports in Europe

Europe remains to be fragmented. Each European market has its own language, habits and business culture. So a customised approach is rquired. We overcome this barrier by operating in each market with our local teams, who know their market and how to develop business there efficiently.
At the same time by coordinating all markets within one project, we are able to create important synergies in sales development and logistics. These synergies can make the difference when it comes to a profitable export operation in the European markets.

Seated in Germany the economic heart of Europe

Axis Blueschild started in 2010 from Düsseldorf in Germany. We provide our services for your exports to Europe from the heart of Europe as Germany remains to be the strategic hub for business in Europe. With vast experience in export development we take care of a professional approach of European buyers.
Moreover when you make in Germany, the development of the other European markets will become much more easier, as Germany is a strong reference for all other markets in Europe.

Making your brand known in Europe

We are neither mediators nor we act as agents. At Axis Blueschild we operate under your brand as your export department. By this model we create brand awareness for you and all business relationships are directly connected and owned by you. We don’t create a unprofessional dependance. Even if you decide at some point to proceed with a different market development model, all common achievements up to this point are controlled by you and can be developed further.

Axis Blueschild – key account project management

Cooperating with Axis Blueschild you have one partner to communicate with. With a personalised service you will monitor together with your Axis Blueschild project manager buyer feedback, lead generation and sales development in each European market. The coordination and monitoring of our local teams is managed by us. This minimises for you the day-by-day work for overlooking so many markets. All teams are executing works on the same standards and specifications.

Exports to Europe need persistence and patience

For sure you cannot expect quick shots in European markets. All markets are mature with high level of competition. For developing sustainable business it takes systematic, recurrent and persistent communication with prospects. In our projects the very first goals is to become connected with the right people in the prospect organisations, to put your company on their radar and to persistently work on getting the chance for starting a cooperation.

The key for your exports to Europe is your export pitch

The success is strongly depended on your export pitch and on efficiently communicating your Unique Selling Points. As stronger they are as better the chances. We support our customers to develop a strong, appealing export pitch. As you know buyers are receiving many cooperation proposals every day and they don’t open them. So the challenge is to find a way to open the door. We achieve that combining a strong export pitch with a personal, systematic and professional approach.

Minimising export development costs

Our innovative service allows to achieve important synergies in project operation. For you it means significantly reduced costs for developing your exports to Europe. You save a huge budget and time for developing cooperations in each European market.

Why Axis Blueschild for your exports to European markets

At Axis Blueschild we are specifically strong in the European markets. For more than 10 years we support customers from abroad in the development of their exports to Europe. Our expertise covers consumer goods and industrial products as well.  With Axis Blueschild you get export teams in the main European markets from day 1.

Contact us for further information!

How to build a premium brand?

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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How to build a premium brand?

For a premium brand everything is easy.
Business partners are eager to cooperate, customers buy your products at high prices and feel happy about it and competition is not an issue.
So the question is, how to become a premium brand? Is it about great marketing or to have the best products in the market? Can every business become a premium brand?

A good product is not enough for a premium brand

Let’s start with products or services.
It is simply impossible to create a strong brand on weak products. A strong brand evolves always from exceptional products. On the other hand, a good product is not guarantee for success. Thousands of companies have become bankrupt, although they had exceptional products. And by experience, a premium brand does not mean necessarily to have the best product in the market.

Value vs Desire

Customers and companies very often seem to follow a “good value for money” logic. But what does this mean? In the end, good value for money can be translated, products to be relatively cheap and a good catch.
A premium brand never will use the good value for money concept. Would you ever consider a Louis Vuitton bag to be good value for money?
The key in premium branding is not to be perceived as good value, but to create DESIRE.

Desire is a feeling, which has to be beat logic. Customers know very well that premium products are overpriced, but they feel great buying them. Premium products are not about characteristics and specifications, but about a story. A story which is able to create the right pictures in the head of the customers and to stimulate strong emotions.

How appealing is your story?

When companies are trying to build a premium brand the use to make the mistake of, either to focus on the product characteristics or on advertising. They are missing the story to tell.

Customers buy premium products only for the story! There is no exception in that. And there is no product or industry, where a strong story is not generating added-value.
Talking about premium brands people use to think of consumer products, but this is not true. You will find premium brands in medical services, leisure and entertainment, architecture and construction, even in industrial goods!

The thing about the story is that it has to be appealing and consistent. And the story has to be communicated in the right way and in the right place. And there is one more important thing: the story must be true! If you try to make up your story, customers sooner or later will find out.

Premium environment for premium brands

The environment is everything. Is is about where you advertise, where you sell your products, where you meet customers and business partners.
It is surprising how often companies are eager to sell their products to wholesalers and distributors , without to examine the points of sales. Wrong placement of your products can damage your brand in no time! And once this happened it is almost impossible to achieve a relaunch. Of course the placement has to be in correlation with the products and the promotion. To get this triangle into a good balance is a difficult act.

The storyteller

The crux is, most of the entrepreneurs are not good storytellers. They can talk for hours about their products and services, but no story there. No desire comes up. This is the explanation for why many companies with good products fail to become premium or even fail at all. To become premium you need to work on your story and then to communicate the story in the right way.

Communicate, communicate, communicate

If nobody knows about you, the good story is worthless. A premium brand generates high profit margins, but at the same time it needs to invest in premium, intensive communication.
All companies know exactly what money they have spent for their production equipment. If you ask them about the marketing budget, many of them have no clear answer. They consider production equipment as investment while marketing costs as expenses. This is not the right mindset to build a strong brand.

Premium branding requires exceptional products, a good story and most important, the company needs to be ready to invest sufficiently in marketing, generating awareness and communicating the story. This triangle needs to be in an optimal balance and to be operated persistently. To become a premium brand is never a one-night success. As in all aspects of business, you first have to be absolutely committed and to invest before you can harvest results.

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Reinvent your business – Digital revolution

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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Reinvent your business
– the digital revolution

For many decades, information technology was considered merely a supportive tool in business development. The main objective of IT departments was, accordingly, the automatization of processes and data management. IT was about improving process performance.

Business is taken over by new players

However, today, we find ourselves in a new era, with digitalization disrupting essentially businesses in its traditional form.
Some striking examples are:
• Travel portals which almost have replaced the classic tour operators/travel agencies
• Online shopping which gradually overtakes local retail shops
• Fintech companies which replace traditional banks
• Technology companies which become leaders in the car sector

Ultimately, there is no industry which is not being affected by digital disruption in one way or the other. Even more challenging is the speed with which this is happening.
And yet, most of the companies struggle badly to assess the threat or rather to recognize the tremendous new opportunities of digitalization. Why is that?

Transform yourself or die!

The answer is obvious: for a start, management has to acknowledge that business might become obsolete very soon. They have to operate in a doomsday scenario. Who in his or her right mind is able to do that?

Steve Jobs for example was. You remember that about 15 years ago Apple had, thanks to the iPod, reinvented itself from a struggling computer company to an innovative leader in consumer electronics. Even better, by repositioning, Apple started to be again successful also in its classic computer business. And what happened next? Apple killed the ipod! They cannibalized their main income source and replaced it with the even more successful iPhone! They did this not when iPods were declining in sales, but at the very peak of their success.

Cannibalize yourself

As Steve Jobs said, if they had not done this, most probably a competitor would have.
Nowadays Apple is taking the next step: from chasing sales of devices to increasing revenues through innovative services on devices.
This is the key of Apple’s success: a continuous transformation and innovation, without any hesitation, to question achievements of the past.

Another obstacle to face disruption by digitalization is that companies in order to identify opportunities of new technologies often rely on their in-house IT department.  Though their role and mindset is a completely different one. Exploring new business models by digitalization and managing IT systems are two completely different things.

Understanding new business models

Digital transformation is a field, which requires a completely new approach and new combination of skills. Deep understanding of business modelling and digital tools have to be combined.
Digital companies lack satisfactory knowledge in business modelling. While they clearly know “how to do” things, they would not necessarily know “what to do”.  They heavily rely on worked-out concepts and precise specifications.

What is the next big thing?

Another big threat of digitalization is that companies have difficulties to predict future requirements. They often get stunned by developments they have “not seen coming”.
Think of Tesla: a newcomer has turned the car-industry upside down. The company’s huge advantage is how it approached driving mobility in a completely new way. By underestimating new technologies and new trends, the established car producers gave Tesla enough time to achieve a significant technology lead. Even if the company in terms of produced cars is still small in comparison to the established players, Tesla today is worth more than Mercedes, Volkswagen and Audi combined. Their last hope was that Tesla would fail to enter mass production. High volumes as barriers for newcomers, but, once again, they were proven wrong .

Disruption is by definition radical

Disruption questions everything you were relying on and proud of.
In order to innovate business, companies need external support for two main reasons:

  • input has to come from experts, who are not captured in established corporate culture. You need people who are not limited by internal power balances or entrenched in false pride of the past
  • new skills are asked, especially in terms of new business models

Steve Jobs brought Apple back to success, after a decade of absence. This gave him the resolve to break-up in no time with bad management culture. He stopped a disoriented product philosophy and initiated a radical u-turn in Apple.

Companies have to transform their business in time as long as they are still on the wave of success with their current business. Understand that digitalization will threaten your business much sooner than you think.
Digitalization at the same time can be a big opportunity for reinventing your business and for achieving a new, high dynamic.

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Eliminating geographical distances – digital communication

 Bosnakis Ioannis
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People like to say „nothing beats a personal relationship!“ and of course this is true, but in globalized business the meaning of this term is significantly changing.

In the past, a personal meeting with a business partner abroad was synonymous with a huge waste of time and money. For a few-hours meeting people had to travel and to spend a significant amount for tickets, renting a car and accommodation expenses.
Obviously, these times are definitely over!

Today, modern tools allow for a close and personal communication, even at daily base, without losing time and money and more important, without any discount on quality and results.
It is the opposite: think of conference video calls with participants, which are sitting in different places and countries!

Though, many people still use to feel uncomfortable of applying digital communication in their daily work, claiming that “it is not the same” as a personal, face-to-face conversation.

In most cases, the reason for that is simple: digital communication, in order to be efficient and convenient respectively, requires a suitable setup and to become familiar with the tools and functions.
Basic use may appear to be very simple, but for professional communication there are some more requirements to consider on:

#1 Choose and install the right applications
There are plenty of applications, which support digital calls as whatsapp, viber, messenger, skype, zoom and many others. You have to choose the ones, fitting best to your needs and to the preferences of professionals you are talking to. There are differences in functionality and preferences depending on the country where your business partners are based. Most probably you will need to use different applications for the different business partners.

#2 Internal training
If you are not sufficiently experienced with these new communication tools, avoid to get trained on your business partners. Ask colleagues or family members instead to operate training calls with you and check all functions out until you feel confident about how to use them.

#3 Get the appropriate accessories 
Depending on how and where you communicate, accessories like headsets and digital pens can make a huge difference the call to be convenient.

#4 Environment
Digital communication can be carried out everywhere, even on your couch at home or sitting in a cafe. Though, it is an absolute no-go to stress your business partners with a high noise level or your kids shouting in the background. Of course, the same applies when you are in your company.
Secure that for the call you are sitting in a quiet place, which will help all participants to focus on the discussion.

#5 Appearance
What is in your business the expected dressing code for face-to-face meetings? The same dressing code applies to digital video calls! There is no space for any discount on that!

#6 Scheduling meetings 
Like any other call you can start video calls by simply pushing a button, but of course you shouldn’t do it. Video meetings have to be scheduled properly, the same way you would schedule a personal meeting. Days, or sometimes weeks before. Best practice is to share a calendar invitation or a mail invitation, which some of the communication applications generate automatically.

#7 Preparations
Most probably you would use in a face-to-face meeting a presentation, documents or even show a product. You can (and should) do all this in a video call too! Most of communication tools provide functions for sharing presentations and documents on the screen and allow to make even written notes on the common screen.

Following these few basic rules and after having operated some calls to become familiar, you will become excited about the efficiency of digital communication and more important you will save a lot of time and money!

In the end you will push your business as within the same time, which you had spent in the past, you will be able to multiply your communication with current and new business partners.

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