Exotec Gets Tactical on Global Expansion

On a recent episode of The DTC Podcast, DTC’s Scott Darling caught up with Exotec CRO Arthur Bellamy, who shared insights on how the French warehouse robotics and material handling company has expanded from Europe to the US and beyond. With more than $1B in systems sold, the company is replicating their playbook to more markets globally. Here are five replicable tactics the company has used for successful entry into new markets.

Step 1: Find Local Partners

When you’re looking at a new market, you need to understand the culture, competition, and clients. The best way to do this is look for local partners that believe in your tech and will dedicate resources to bring it to their existing client base. You benefit from the credibility your partners have in the market. They benefit from being able to offer their clients world class solutions like Exotec.

We tested the water through partnerships, quickly found product market fit, and got the momentum we needed to start building a team.

Step 2: Send in a Marketing Advance Team

Engage with a local PR agency that can get you in front of the right journalists. We specifically targeted vertical, specialized media to make sure the right people were exposed to products and successes. That creates awareness and excitement. Then, we got a little bit more sophisticated with our digital marketing that helped us nurture interest before having to build our own sales or business development teams.

Step 3: Hire Efficiently, Start Small

In the US, we started with a very limited team: a managing director and one sales salesperson. That was enough to support the initial clients that came through our partnerships. Over the course of a couple of short years, we saw significant successes and the pipeline of projects increasing. We’d initially hired ahead of growth, but growth pretty quickly caught up. We realized this market was not just something we could manage from far away but an important priority.

Step 4: Showcase Your Work

People want to see our robots in action. It’s a little bit old school but we plan for significant presence at trade shows. It’s how our prospects shop. Getting a client reference site is the eventual goal but in new markets, 80% of our initial leads and opportunities sourcing came from a single source: trade shows.

Step 5: Invest Directly

As a fantastic logistics hub, Atlanta is well known for having a robust supply chain industry. So, we opened a warehouse, a showroom, and our American HQ here. Exotec Co-founder and CEO Romain Moulin and I moved to the US to really scale the business.

The Result

In the last two years, Exotec has scaled from five to 100 employees in Atlanta. The company’s also opened Demo Center Showrooms in Tokyo and Seoul, and has signed a strategic partnership to further expand into Eastern Europe.

Enjoy the whole conversation here or download wherever you get your podcasts.