Pizza Fusion expands internationally

International Expansion news:

Samir Group, a Saudi Arabian company, will be exhibiting at next month's Franchising Middle East (FME) exhibition in a bid to take the Pizza Fusion brand across the Middle East, according to AMEinfo.com.

"Food and beverage franchise outlets are opening in an abundance across the Middle East, with new to market concepts offering increasingly diverse dining options. This year's FME exhibition will welcome a number of dining brands and we are delighted that Pizza Fusion will be trying the show for the first time. Healthy eating options are proving to be very successful in the Middle East market and we look forward to hearing of the first Pizza Fusion outlet opening in the region soon," said Abdul Rahman Falaknaz, Chairman of International Expo-Consults (IEC), the organiser of FME.

FME is the largest international franchise exhibition in the Middle East and is supported by the IFA (International Franchise Association). The exhibition facilitates direct communication between entrepreneurs and potential franchise buyers from the region and beyond.

International expansion of retail brands, at least as we know them, has its limitations

International expansion does not always involve exporting your retail brand. A recent article in StarTribune gives some good examples. According to this article, Richfield-based Best Buy last week did a major about-face, closing nine of its nameplate stores in China and another one in Turkey, which it entered just two years ago.

Best Buy, which said its international retreat would cost up to $245 million, is just the most recent example of a U.S. retailer finding that stores don't export so well. Wal-Mart had four failed attempts in Asia and Germany from 1995 until 2006. Several years ago U.S. clothiers sampled the European market and failed because, by tradition and sometimes law, there was little or no Sunday shopping. Home Depot has been closing stores in China.

But in some sectors, acceptance of U.S.-branded products can be wholehearted. KFC is a huge success in Asia. So is McDonald's. 

Best Buy's branded stores in China were similar to its U.S. stores, where products made by different manufacturers sit side by side by category. Computers in one section, printers in another, for example. But in China, shoppers are used to smaller stores crammed with technology products that are bunched together by manufacturers and sold by clerks licensed to that manufacturer. Thus there is less comparison shopping. There is also an active black market that undercuts what retailers can charge. Chinese consumers also value price over quality.

Although it closed its branded stores, Best Buy will concentrate on the Chinese marketplace with Five Star, a Chinese chain in which it acquired a controlling interest in 2006. At the time there were 136 Five Star stores, and Best Buy has added some the past five years, bringing the total to 159. Now it wants to accelerate that by adding 40 to 50 outlets in the next two years. Best Buy says its purchase of Five Star has been a success. Year-over-year sales for the chain were up nearly 30 percent with "significantly" improved operating margins.

International expansion, therefore, involves looking at all alternatives and often requires new strategies. 

Slowing global expansion for mobile in Middle East

International expansion slowing for Middle Eastern mobile operators according to PRTM study. 

Middle Eastern mobile operators remain committed to international expansion but face some challenges due to slowing growth and intensifying competition, according to a study.
Five Middle Eastern companies - Orascom/WIND, Zain, STC, Qatar Telecom and Etisalat - have entered the global stage, but last year the global expansion began to slow, said PRTM in its latest report.
“The past several years have witnessed a tremendous rise in demand for mobile services in emerging markets. A number of entrepreneurial operators capitalised on that opportunity, and they quickly became global leaders. They have the opportunity to play at the top table, but slowing growth and intensifying competition will pose daunting challenges,” said Anil Khurana, lead director of PRTM’s Middle East Region and co-author of the report.
According to the PRTM’s study, “The Future of Telecommunications: New Strategies for a New World,” customers will gravitate towards service providers with the best in-market broadband networks, due to an increasingly data-centric world - leading network operators to revisit their models of the past five years, where every spare dollar went overseas.
Operators will likely leverage merger and acquisition and capital spending to improve competitive positions in their countries/regions rather than investing in global empire building, the report said.
It said the developing world will be the stage for intensifying competition, further price wars, lower average amount of revenue per users and continued rapid growth in operational costs. Subscriber numbers will continue to grow, but revenues will rise more slowly and profitability and cash-flows may flatten or decline.
“Until recently, companies like Telenor, Orascom, Zain and STC were investing for their own international footprint. Going forward, they will likely sell off small peripheral operations in weak positions, focus on building in-market depth or ally with larger groups,” Khurana said.

How to succeed with international expansion online

International expansion of affordable eye glasses

 

Roy Hessel, CEO, EyeBuyDirect.com, Bethesda, Md.

Our company’s mission is to make affordable eyeglasses available to people everywhere in the world. 

In the end, our international expansion was a huge success.

Our eyeglasses are sold online, across the world. We focused first on the U.S. market because it was the easiest place to get a foothold. We expanded into the European market primarily because of the region’s widespread use of credit cards. 

The first step to dealing with this was simple enough: We translated our website. 

Our customer service inquiries in Spanish, Italian, German, and other languages went through the roof but we didn’t have the staff to handle these multi-lingual service requests.

Dual strategy for expansion in new markets

For starters, we hired new employees once it was clear we had a certain level of demand in that language. We would assess the amount of emails we got in French, for example, and hire a representative when we had surpassed a certain number. We have a location outside of Paris that services all of Western Europe; this location also makes it easy to hire representatives in the area who speak multiple languages.

We also used new language hires as a resource for expanding into new markets. For instance, we didn’t have a lot of Japanese inquiries, but I saw Japan as a market with a lot of opportunity. So we hired a customer service representative from Japan because we knew that she would be an invaluable in-house resource. Employees native to a country can easily do research on determining the right price points for products and look at what the competition is doing. This employee helped us break into the Japanese market.

Keeping our international staff happy

Our customer service staff at locations in San Francisco, Manchester, England, Paris, and Shanghai do activities together, off-campus activities like sports.  Relationships have developed among our 200 employees and turnover is low because we believe people have a place to be themselves. And if they’re learning from their colleagues, and enjoying spending time with them, they are more likely to be patient with customers on the phone.

– As told to Caitlin Elsaesser

Japanese gaming firm focus on international expansion

Whether you are interested in international expansion or just gaming, you may want to note this story from GamesOnDeck:

Japanese mobile social network operator and game developer DeNA announced a rebranding for its popular MobageTown service to just “Mobage”, and unveiled a new logo with English text. 

...The change signals DeNA’s expanding international focus... it’s launching a global Mobage platform for Android devices in the coming months, and has manufacturer bundling deals with major firms like Samsung.

Expanding its international userbase is key, as DeNA generates much of its revenues from virtual goods sales in Mobage games. ...

Recruiter attributes success to international expansion strategy

Recruiter benefits from international expansion

According to Recruiter, global expansion is behind rising profits at NES, according to the technical recruiter’s group chief executive Neil Tregarthen. The group, which has opened overseas trading offices in Brazil, Equatorial Guinea, Saudi Arabia and Brisbane during the year, reports that operations outside of the UK now make up 78% of group profits and 59% of group revenues.

International expansion of stock exchanges and their technology

Stock exchanges engage in international expansion

According to Financial Times, Korea Exchange, Asia’s third-largest bourse, is aggressively expanding abroad, exporting its trading platforms and information technology systems to emerging markets, in an attempt to boost its global profile and diversify its revenue sources.

The exchange has made overseas expansion a top priority for this year as it aims to join the top five ranks by 2020. KRX is already a highly liquid bourse with a well-developed trading system and has one of the world’s most actively traded derivatives market.

KRX aims to expand into 30 countries, mostly emerging markets in southeast and central Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. It helped Laos and Cambodia set up stock exchanges and would co-manage them while it won orders to modernise Uzbekistan's bourse and to install the monitoring system for the Philippine stock exchange.

The article goes on to explain that other exchanges are engaging in similar internationalization activities, to wit:

• The proposed merger between Australia’s stock exchange with Singapore Exchange.
• Deutsche Börse's advanced talks with NYSE Euronext.
• London Stock Exchange's agreed all-share merger with TMX Group, operator of Canada’s largest stock exchange.