selling to Irish People

bogwalrus

I am hearing a lot more people say how the days of selling to Irish people are gone and that we should be thinking more about selling to the uk and Europe.


This makes complete sense to me and the idea made me think that alot of Irish "business people" really do still believe there are huge profits to made made out of selling to the Irish.

I have attended a few of these business coffee mornings over the last year. I have met some very motivate young business people and heard their ideas etc. Not once at these meetings have i heard about targeting markets abroad. Its all about setting up websites trying to make money out of the Irish.

Considering the population of Ireland compared to the Uk and mainland Europe the reason for targeting Europe and the UK with your Business is obvious.


I feel the government (and other people in a power position) should be communicating this message more and more so that young people Broaden their thinking to not just include Ireland but the world.

This is my morning rant but i feel worth bringing up for chat on this forum.

YouBuyLocal

If a young person in Ireland says "the Irish market is too small, we are targeting the UK market" and they have a web-based idea or an actual business, they are almost always scoffed at and dismissed. The line is that promotional costs are massive to get into the UK market, let alone Europe. And yet a 23 year old in Brooklyn can target the entire North American continent and (s)he is lauded as showing the right ambitions and instincts. Ireland has an inherently conservative culture and Irish people who go abroad inevitably break out of this easier, like David Kirkpatrick, only returning to bemoan the state of our education system & entrepreneurial spirit. I think we are naturally ambitious and optimistic, but at every turn people in authoritative positions don't want us getting ahead of ourselves. So we learn to speak at the write level: "local, national, international", instead of: "this service is lateral and we are incorporating as much virality in the system as we can to promote fast growth in external markets".

Both are terrible clichés but I personally don't see a problem with that.

getsome

Nice thread, I am young and have business ideas that I think are good, not talking multi-million pound business, but ones that could grow, unfortunately I don't think that the size of the Irish market is big enough to help with that growth, so I think maybe aiming at the UK or even Australia would be better.

Why would the government want to tell our young creative entrepreneurs to target other countries and give them the money that could be made from taxes and job creation? Unless your talking about exporting goods? Saying all this I think people know that bigger population means more potential customers!

bogwalrus

Like the above poster said, there is a conservative nature to the Irish. I suppose we do live on an island and in the past we have only ever sold to ourselves. I think young entrepreneurs should be encouraged to develop their ideas to be relevant to the whole world rather than just the Irish People.

A good example would be yer man that made those Hurleys and was on Dragons den. For years he was selling Hurleys to Ireland and never really thought about foreign markets (understandably). Now he sells all over the world to the american army etc.

The same could be said about a guy i Know who's dad makes musical instruments. The son got the idea to see if there were any shops in the States interested in buying irish instruments and within a few months they were inundated with orders.

All it takes to get out of this "i only sell to ireland" mentality is a bit of a push or at least someone saying "hey sell your stuff abroad cause the world is huge".

Now with websites like etsy which allow you to use their site to sell your stuff it can be so easy for irish crafts people etc to make good business abroad.


On the same point People who want to make the next million dollar website have to remember to target the world.

UnklePhil

I don't think it's a bad idea to start local.

If you have a good idea and can sell to conservative people, you'll have momentum and your skills honed when you try to break into a bigger market.

That said, you should be thinking big.

Chet Zar

Think big for sure. But you know the Irish market best if you're from here/live here - and it's a good place to focus on starting out. Better to trial things here and learn from mistakes on a smaller scale before moving into much bigger markets where there's a lot more at stake..

antoinolachtnai

Well, if you are looking for a 'starter' market to try something completely new, Ireland isn't necessarily the one you would pick. Dublin is OK, but that'd be about it.

Ireland isn't necessarily a good market to start in.

You might be better in London or Paris, or Northern Europe. It just depends.

It should go without saying that starting out in a market that is not local to you is going to require a good bit more capital than just starting locally.

One big mistake is to have some success in a central area in Dublin, for example, and then to expand to the outer suburbs. It won't necessarily work as it did in the centre. You might be better replicating the concept in a UK or European city.

YouBuyLocal

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

Well, if you are looking for a 'starter' market to try something completely new, Ireland isn't necessarily the one you would pick. Dublin is OK, but that'd be about it.

Ireland isn't necessarily a good market to start in.

You might be better in London or Paris, or Northern Europe. It just depends.

It should go without saying that starting out in a market that is not local to you is going to require a good bit more capital than just starting locally.

One big mistake is to have some success in a central area in Dublin, for example, and then to expand to the outer suburbs. It won't necessarily work as it did in the centre. You might be better replicating the concept in a UK or European city.

I think you're a hundred % right about tailoring you business expansion based upon environment than region, very astute

J_Wholesale

If it's a web based business, then focusing on Ireland initially can be a huge mistake. We wholesale jewellery online from our website, and when we started out, we focused entirely on the UK. If we'd tried to sell online to Irish retailers 5 years ago we never would have gotten off the ground. eCommerce in this country is a shadow of what it is across the water, and that's not down to population - Irish people simply don't buy online as much as their UK counterparts. And it's even worse when it comes to b2b - Irish businesses are about 4 years behind businesses in the UK when it comes to doing business online. Even today, with the economy as it is, many Irish businesses still overspend hugely by buying through traditional avenues and ignoring the savings they could make online.

Breaking into overseas markets for online businesses is not as difficult as some make out, especially the UK market. Online advertising levels the playing field to the extent that a UK customer could buy from you, receive their goods or service, and never even realise you're an Irish business. We need to stop thinking locally and start thinking about where the money is, because it's not here.