De-Venture Asia
Go to Market (ASIA)
Sailing to foreign lands are founded on the principle of prevention - and a bit of risk.
I highly recommend in situ small market testing which can be integrated with your agile management or design thinking practices.
What are some preventative measures I can take?
Offline market testing in the local market
Online market testing
Key Partnerships
On the grid A/B Marke testing
You’ve heard about market a/b testing in UX but how would you know if your product will sell in a new market? As you may not appeal to everyone do you know your demographics?
Personal Tips: Market reports or trend reports are not enough to really gauge the temperamental fast changing China (or Hong Kong) market. “Go to the mattress”, talk to the locals, set grassroots campaigns and then launch collaborations, create event to really engage with direct consumers to see its response.
Personal Experience:Direct Consumer Market Testing: conceptualized and executed market testing (also budget friendly) with events like Singapore Night Festival (Singapore, over total 500,000 attendees) in 2018 by doing a pop-up event in the Singapore Design Museum, work with cross-overs with unique concept stores for shop in shop, Acorn Studio x Curated Taiwan x Ethos (Hong Kong) which pulled together influentials from different industry to create a one of kind experience, as well as Shanghai’s Vogue Fashion Night Out in 2015, trend setters fairs’ Shanghai Showroom, or by occupying high foot traffic open space: The Grounds (Alexandria, Australia) (2018), Common Grounds (Hong Kong) (2015).
Online Market Testing
Heard about the Chinese version of Instagram, Facebook version?
Just like Instagram verified accounts learn how to navigate those waters, make them relevant to your business and set them up.
MY INSIGHTS: set up the Weibo, Wechat official account, Baidu’s own SEO search engine for JINNNN and ARETE, aligned all the marketing communication between Chinese and global platforms.
Creating close encounters.
Shop in shops or shop in cafés or shop in department stores?
When it comes to deciding how to use your marketing budget, events have always been the most costly. Yet they are still one of the most relevant tools to boost your business and get chatty face to face with your clients.
MY INSIGHTS: Find your die hard fans.
Digital back end data on Shopify for example might give you a fast and give general insight on what is going on: how many people came into your website, what’s the clickthrough rate, who are the referrals. Unfortunately, there’s still a lot of key datas that are unmeasured, especially when the data is been sorted out via “Multiple Choices”. As there’s a lot of customers, lots of loud noises. It’s important therefore to observe the audience, what were they caught by before making the choice? Was it, for example, a very cold day the day of purchase that skewed the data? Which out of the customers of your data sample are your ambassadors.
That’s why on the ground events are just as important before the internet era and there’s nothing better keeping all variables the same but choosing difference location that lure different audience.
Demystified: Signed, sealed.. but delivered (hopefully)
E-commerce has reduced global time latency but is requiring an increased amount of quality control, check in balance between online and offline for every step of the business/project.
The fear that the Asian counterparts won’t hold to their end of the bargain, misunderstandings of how the market operates have kept many companies reluctant to enter the Chinese jungle.
Yet, there’s many low hanging fruits, with the right strategy and with the right compromise it could be a window of opportunities.
Personal Experience: Build up global distribution network both online and on brick and mortar, aligning global brand positioning and creating seamless O2O integration. Frequent visit to ensure that visual merchandising was fresh, appropriate product placement, stores’ personnel training.
Opened the door to European boutiques, Energia Positiva (Madrid,Es), as well as department stores, e.g. Harrods (London, UK) , as well as in Cities in The Galleria (Dubai, UAE), Eslite (Taipei, TW).
3 steps for Japanese Market
Tweeted for its high quality assurantce, to bring your servince to the Japanese market isn’t that simple or immediate. By even taking 3 basic concepts that may set you up for success for a long lasting collaboration, albeit a bit slower.
1. Localisation and translation in Japanese.
2. Risk averse. Preference for local agent or importer to ensure that all problems that might arise are taken care of.
3. Repeated testing for quality assurance.
Personal Tips: annually exhibit in trade fairs, a sign that your startup is healthy a/o company is stable. Find key influential and relevant partners, support the local market diligently in Japanese, create buzz and locate influential media, consignment agreements are a viable option to ease their hesitation in signing for big orders.
Experience in Japan: Signed sole distributor agreements for LUNA, consignment agreements, conducted thorough market intelligence, a/b testing marketing campaigns, exported goods to Japan. Case Example: Brand collaboration with Tabi Labo, featured as well in magazine Shopping Design (FB followers 140k).