Potatoes to Poland, Sand to Saudi Arabia

My mother is one of those people who likes to chat on airplanes. I am not, so those of you who sit down next to me on a long-haul flight are likely to be disappointed.

In any event, my mother has spoken with all sorts of people on airplanes, from Joey Bishop to the manager of a then-unknown Australian band named INXS. One of her most interesting chats, though, was with an exporter of sand. More peculiar, the gentleman in question was exporting sand to Saudi Arabia. It would seem to me that there’s more than enough sand in Saudi Arabia to go around, but according to this account the sand is actually too fine to make strong concrete, so this exporter’s business was exporting coarse US sand to mix with the native sand in large construction projects.

The story may well be apocryphal, but the point to be taken from it is still a good one. Never assume that a foreign market doesn’t need your product or service – people can and do export beer to Germany, potatoes to Poland, and Big Macs to more countries than I care to count. In fact, one of my clients exports pretzels to Germany, which would seem like a sure loser, but the fact is that US pretzel products have developed very differently than those in Germany since commercial US pretzel baking began in 1861.

If you think your product isn’t export-worthy, take a second look at what differentiates it from the rest and you may well find a foreign market for it after all.