Small Business: Offshore distributors - Janelle Priest, Plantae

Janelle Priest, sales and marketing manager, Plantae.

Janelle Priest is sales and marketing manager for certified organic skincare brand Plantae, which sells offshore via distributors in South Korea, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia.

How have you gone about finding your offshore distributors?

In August last year we attended the Sydney International Spa and Beauty Expo and we had a number of leads from that. That was the first time we had done a trade show with Plantae by ourselves. In October 2012, as part of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise's Path to Market programme for Taiwan, we also attended the Taiwan Organic Expo, which was great for contacts. We want to make sure we go to a trade show every year to be proactive in our search for distributors.

Every week we also get enquiries through our website from potential distributors, and a while ago we put a message out on LinkedIn asking for interest from anyone wanting to wholesale/distribute cosmetics. We had quite a lot of replies to that, and although a few were scams, we had some high quality leads, including one from what is now our Netherlands distributor.

What are you looking for in distributors?

That they're experienced and that a core part of their business is distributing cosmetics, preferably natural and organic. We're looking for companies that are well set up, established and organised.

What's your process for vetting potential distributors?

An Auckland company, called Katabolt, was recommended to us; we were told that they were good at helping young companies looking to export, so we've been working with them since mid last year.

They helped us to create a process to qualify potential distributors that would save us time, because we're a small company and everyone is juggling lots of roles. So now we have a document that we get people to fill in, which covers the basics about their operation.

I then review those enquiries and if any look promising I'll take them to the team for their input, and they may have some more questions, which I'll follow up on by email. Then once we've agreed as a team a potential distributor is worth pursuing I'll lock in a Skype call with them. A video call is so important because you do get a sense of who the people are. The Skype calls take a bit more organisation as well, so it can show they're motivated. From there on it's lots and lots more Skype calls and emails - you have to be in constant communication.

Has the process thrown up any thorny issues for the company?

Going into the EU market has thrown up some regulatory issues, which we're in the process of addressing but it takes time. We've been worried it could affect our relationship with our European distributor, because we don't want either party to feel under too much stress and there have been a lot of question marks around time frames. We're working hard to make sure it doesn't affect our relationship, though - we're very transparent and honest with them and they're the same.