So what are some of the bottlenecks you are seeing as we scale the business?

Yeah, so I mean, the biggest operational piece is, Forecasting.

The amount of brands that have the inability to forecast.

Now, we don't know how much we're going to sell on Black Friday.

We don't know how much we're going to sell at Christmas.

We know what we sold last year and we can hope we know what we want to sell.

We want to double, triple, quadruple, whatever, right? But the brands that are winning are the ones that can forecast very well.

So can you talk about without putting any name to a brand or business, some successes that you've had?

And my first question for you, for brands new to international expansion, what does it actually mean to become a global e-commerce business?

So I think there's several things that, you know, going global is an amazing opportunity for brands.

But it does come with some hurdles to overcome.

And you've got to be doing it for the right reasons in the first place.

And some of those reasons might be that the brand has plateaued where it currently is.

It's natural for it to go overseas.

You don't want to develop new products.

in

So my question here, Andy, is how do you kind of guide a brand through this process and So that it is less overwhelming and cumbersome and as easy as a process as it potentially can be to capitalize on all of the e-commerce opportunity in the UK and EU.

So we've worked with over 2000 clients now, and that's between our VAT, our warehousing, our account management, all the different pieces that we deal with.

And having done that, what we were able to do is identify what worked and what didn't work and where we engage with a seller in the right way, the wrong way.

You know, how did that help the brand grow, etc.

So what we were able to do was come up with a success pathway.

What does an expansion pathway look like and what does it mean you need to go through? Now, we came up with a seven-step process that you need to go through.

And of that seven-step process, there was 30 things you need to do.

Is that something that you help guide your brand through is kind of doing those keyword research analyses to be like, yeah, let's not go to Spain because nobody's searching this search term in Spain, but tons of people are in Germany, for example.

But I also think the taxes and the laws on the ground, like if you're an American at least, like how do I even begin to navigate this without screwing up big time, right? So what would be your advice to an e-commerce entrepreneur that maybe they're doing well in America, they want to expand to UK and the rest of Europe? Like what would you say to them if they had that fear?

Well, the first thing is there's no rush, number one.

Everyone thinks that expansion has got to happen now, it's got to happen quick, let's make it happen.

And in reality, there's like a sequence and an architecture to it.

We've expanded 5,000 brands across the last decade.

And across that decade, I've worked out the sequence that actually makes it work successfully.

The first thing is down to you as a business.

So talk to me about how that came about and what your strategy was.

But I also think the taxes and the laws on the ground, like if you're an American at least, like how do I even begin to navigate this without screwing up big time, right? So what would be your advice to an e-commerce entrepreneur that maybe they're doing well in America, they want to expand to UK and the rest of Europe? Like what would you say to them if they had that fear?

Well, the first thing is there's no rush, number one.

Everyone thinks that expansion has got to happen now, it's got to happen quick, let's make it happen.

And in reality, there's like a sequence and an architecture to it.

We've expanded 5,000 brands across the last decade.

And across that decade, I've worked out the sequence that actually makes it work successfully.

The first thing is down to you as a business.

So talk to me about how that came about and what your strategy was.

[laughs]

But if it's a good business that's working and you've bought it 'cause it's a profitable business, you might take three months to do this.

Like, and the longer you do this bit, the better.

So the first thing is just observe what's going on.

The second thing is to start assessing what that looks like.

What does success look like? What are they actually doing that's making a difference? What are they actually, you, doing what they say they're doing? You know, are the systems and processes that you've res- you've acquired actually being followed? And then the next bit, T, is to track them.

Every single acquisition we've ever done, and every business I ever speak to, especially b- business owners are very guilty of this- When you speak to them, they say they're getting 100 leads a month, and their conversion's 50%.

Okay.

But would, would you mind just giving a, a brief as to who you are and what you do at the moment?

Yeah.

So I'm Andy Hooper.

I've got 12 companies in the UK, Europe, the US, the Middle East, and Africa, and those...

That group of businesses globally expand e-commerce brands, and what that means is, is that if you've got a, an e-commerce business based in the UK and you wanted to expand it to the US, Germany, Australia, you can use our software, click a button, and expand to a new region literally by clicking a button for us, a software business.

And that business does all of the compliance, so tax compliance, product compliance, all of the logistics, so shipping it from, from the factory through customs into warehouses.

We've got warehouses in the UK, Europe, and the US, and then it's all managed through our software.

Yeah.