Sunday, October 04, 2026
SME websites and pitches default to telling their own story. The research says customers skim past most of it looking for themselves - here's the StoryBrand framework that fixes it.
There's a moment almost every successful FMCG brand in New Zealand reaches: the home market is fully ranged, the growth curve is flattening, and someone in the business says, "What about Australia?" It's the right question asked at the wrong time more often than it's asked at the right one — because export isn't a bigger version of local ranging. It's a different business with different economics, and most founders find that out after the pallets have already shipped.
The enemy here is the assumption that what worked to win NZ shelf space will simply work harder in a bigger market. It won't. Freight economics change your landed cost structure. Retail buyer relationships have to be rebuilt from zero with no local trading history behind you. Category conventions differ — a pack size, claim, or price point that reads as premium here can read as odd or overpriced there. Statistics NZ and NZTE both track a consistent pattern in SME export data: businesses that treat their first export market as a scaled-up domestic launch, rather than a market entry requiring its own validation, see materially higher failure and withdrawal rates than those that test before they commit.
This is the sequence Kevin runs with FMCG clients considering their first export market, before a single container gets booked.
1. Validate demand before distribution — test with a small independent retailer first.
2. Price for the landed cost, not the local one.
3. Choose the distributor like a business partner — check their portfolio and get exclusivity terms in writing.
4. Budget for a 12–18 month runway with no profit.
5. Keep the home market funded while you test.
"Kevin has some amazing ideas around marketing, things we would have never thought of ourselves. He also helped us through the process of getting into supermarkets. He has gone above and beyond what he needed to!"
— Amy Nixon, Icehouse Coaching Programme
Export is exciting in a way domestic ranging rarely is — it feels like proof the brand has really made it. That excitement is exactly why founders skip the slow, unglamorous validation step and go straight for the big distribution deal. The execution gap isn't a lack of ambition; it's the absence of someone asking the unglamorous questions before the exciting ones — landed cost, distributor track record, cash runway — while the founder is still in the "this could be huge" phase of the decision.
If "what about Australia" has come up in your business this year, that conversation deserves a validation plan before it gets a shipping date — that's exactly where Kevin starts with you.
...and you become the owner who enters a new market with the numbers checked first.