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Barbara Knight doesn’t have a sales team even for the U.S., so when the possibility of selling internationally emerged, she had to get by with a little help from her friends.
“We have no sales employees; I’m it. But we don’t yet need this type of overhead to accomplish sales growth,” says the president and CEO of EnviroPouch, which makes reusable steam sterilization pouches for dentist’s and doctor’s offices, tattoo studios, blood banks and other settings where infection control is key.
While most of her business remains in the U.S., Ms. Knight started to explore exporting in 2008 when the CEO of Clinichem, a Budapest, Hungary-based medical device manufacturer, contacted her about partnering and urged her to gain international certifications that would allow her to sell in Europe and beyond.
But at that time, exporting seemed, well, foreign. So she went looking for help and found it in representatives from both the Georgia Department of Economic Development and the U.S. Commercial Service, which help U.S. companies compete abroad. The state has offices in 11 countries, while Commerce covers 70-plus countries.
“They are superbly trained, highly enthusiastic, top-grade professionals, whose passion and careers are to nurture and grow sales exports,” Ms. Knight said.
Her first trade show provided a prime example. In 2010 Knight participated in MEDICA, the world’s largest medical convention, as part of the Georgia Department of Economic Development’s delegation to the show in Dusseldorf, Germany. Coincidentally, nearby were the U.S. Commercial Service and CliniChem’s booth.
“I networked with all the reps and that laid the foundation to start exporting to Australia, Italy, India and Canada in 2011-2012, which continues to grow today,” she says.
Now, though, her exports are competing with opportunities in the U.S., where she has FDA (10k) approval. With medical products, the upfront cost of getting certified to sell into a new country can be a chicken-and-egg problem. You need approvals to get sales, but you need sales to justify paying for the approval process.
Now in its 22nd year, Ms. Knight said EnviroPouch’s domestic sales are her main focus.
“We’ve avoided overextending our resources in pursuit of the alluring, new international inquiries that would also require the investment of our resources to meet each country’s regulatory requirement,” she says. “Instead, for growth we continue to bootstrap the company and grow organically.”
In the past five years, due to customer demands, she gained approval to sell in the EU, Canada, Australia and Japan. She is now looking at exporting to other countries that accept the U.S. FDA registration.
This slow but steady approach fits Ms. Knight, even though she acknowledges that she may be losing global business.
“The total number of countries that we export to could be much higher based on the total number of global inquiries from a growing list of literally dozens and dozens of countries,” she says. “But the volume or potential volume in each country must justify the upfront investment of regulatory compliance.”
She balances the cost of appropriate marketing materials, currency exchange, U.S. tax implications and VAT obligations versus the exporting rewards.
“It’s tough to tell excited prospective customers ‘no’ when we’re passionately interested in sharing Enviropouch with the world, but the cost justification isn’t there yet.”
However, Knight says that within five years her international growth will “at least double in sales volume and expand into at least twice as many countries as we ship to today. Conservatively.”
The government reps will continue to play a role in new market entry, offering a “gamut of services” including data research, corporate vetting, country delegation visits, sales leads, assistance with shipping documentation or VAT hold-ups and hosting booths at MEDICA and other significant world industry conventions. It’s all about putting her tax dollars to work for her Peachtree City-based firm, she said.
“The reps enthusiastically welcome and embrace the opportunities to make a big and critical impact for the smaller business,” she said. “Reps commit their resources toward those required incremental steps in qualified, potential sales export opportunities. Their assistance can make all the difference for either the survival or a giant leap forward in global trade.”
Ms. Knight purchased the company from its founders, Dr. David and James Stoddard, who are brothers and dentists. Her domestic sales, not unlike her international ones, are done without the traditional sales team.
“We have the premier sales force of health care infections control professionals — our customers — which are dentists, dental hygienists and other loyal customers — who tell others about our product within peer circles and online in social media,” she says.
Rounding out her non-paid sales efforts are Internet searches and word-of-mouth in social forums and chats among infection control professionals. The product’s advantages, in her view, speak for themselves: Unlike the industry standard disposable bags, the EnviroPouch can be used a minimum of 200 times, which reduces purchasing costs, saves storage space, reduces excess waste and waste removal costs, lowers sterilization processing costs and helps the environment.