Export Week: Weird Fish celebrate international success

Head quartered in Cheltenham, Weird Fish is a leading wholesaler and retailer of active lifestyle clothing and branded products. With a successful web presence and national retail presence, Weird Fish is a success story in itself to compete against bigger clothing brands.

Head quartered in Cheltenham, Weird Fish is a leading wholesaler and retailer of active lifestyle clothing and branded products.  With a successful web presence and national retail presence, Weird Fish is a success story in itself to compete against bigger clothing brands.

Identifying international markets as an important strategy for growth, Matt explains the lessons learned of how they embarked on the exercise, the lessons learned and the advice to would be exporters:

Matt Janes, explains:

“Devising our international plan required the need to research all potential countries before we dedicated resource researching them further. In doing so, we identified a number of surprising territories that were suitable and those that were not.

When we had narrowed the priority countries to explore, it was fundamental to obtain local knowledge, especially in how to transact business. Again, it was surprising some of the cultural aspects that we unearthed and it was essential to ask even the simplest of questions to gain the valuable insights that we found. Without this, our plan wouldn’t have been the success it is.

So far, our products and brand have been really well received.  The key to success is identifying something you can offer that can’t easily be obtained locally. Part of the plan’s success is the importance of the brand and being able to easily express your strengths.

Having already successfully sold our brand into Ireland, France, Holland, Czech Republic, Germany and Russia, we’ll start trading fashion internationally in September this year with the plan to roll out our formula to other territories including Scandinavia and North America. Germany certainly appears to be an ideal market due to its large stable economy with demographics similar to ours that share a love of quality brands.

My advice to anyone embarking on an export plan would be to invest in research first before spending time and money chasing an economy that you think your brand fits into.  UKTI is a great source of information for export.  They have a ton on knowledge on this subject and can advise you on what territories best suit your product. Also make sure you have your brand in order and that it is easy to understand what you are selling.  If people don’t understand it in the UK, it’ll be even harder to translate late it. Simplicity is the key.”

For more information about the UKTI and advice on exports, please visit: http://www.ukti.gov.uk/export/howwehelp.html