Exports: Emerging opportunities

摘要

Twenty or thirty years ago I picked up the following, which are still as true today as when written. 1. THIS IS THE FIRST COMMANDMENT: it is the law of profits that good markets exist only where demand goes ahead of supply. Therefore build demand, and get more demand, for your product. 2. AND THE SECOND COMMANDMENT is like unto the first: teach your customers diligently the merits of your product, for only a fool buys that for which he knows no use. Prepare the market carefully, in advance, for education costs only pennies per bushel but the price of ignorance is in dollars. 3. ONE THOUSAND GROWERS SHALL NOT attempt to sell their produce to seven buyers, for verily the growers will cut each others' prices to pieces, and the buyers will wink and laugh. But one seller and seven buyers make a firm market and fatten the pocketbook of all. 4. HE WHO SELLS BY UNDERCUTTING his neighbour's price has thrown a boomerang, which will return to smite him. His neighbour shall cut in his turn, and both will be sorely wounded in the hip pocket. 5. YOU SHALL NOT ATTEMPT TO MARKET A POOR VOLUME, for while the seller of a million bushels attracts the hard cash buyers, the pushcart peddler must hunt the byways and alleys for bad cheque customers. (The Australian Quarantine Inspection Service has nearly 2000 horticultural exporters on its books.) 6. UNLESS YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL SALESMAN as well as a grower, hire yourself a salesman, for the amateur cannot compete equally with the professional, and the buyers of produce today are surely professionals. 7. GUARD DILIGENTLY AGAINST OVERFILLING the nearby markets, for a glut ruins the price level and the blight speeds by telegraph over land and sea. Offer your produce to many cities, for fruit grows only in certain spots of their terrestrial bail, but all the people of all the nations hunger for fruit. 8. STRIVE MIGHTILY FOR A STABLE MARKET, for therein the merchant buys tomorrow's needs freely and with confidence. But when the price cutters enter, the merchant withholds buying, lest his competitor buys cheaper or tomorrow's fruit be lower and the unsold fruit piles up like a dammed river, unto the bursting thereof. 9. FORGET NOT THE EYE CONTROLS THE PURSE STRINGS: that bruises and misshapen fruit are repulsive and poor colour looks shabby; and that your produce must sell itself in the supermarkets alongside seventy other fruits and vegetables. An honest grade is a delight to all and brings reorders, but a deceitful or a sloppy pack induces wrath and rejection. 10. TREAT YOUR CUSTOMERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE YOUR SUPPLIERS TREAT YOU, for verily your customer is the most important person in your business--as valuable to you as your produce. The cost of gaining a new customer is twenty-six fold that of satisfying and keeping an existing customer. Successful business is a two way street with both buyer and seller reaping rewards.