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You are here: Home > Business > Marketing > Trade Show Handbook for South African Exporters to the USA |
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Advice You - Trade Show Handbook for South African Exporters to the USA
DECIDING HOW MANY SHOWS TO DO PER YEAR Depending on whether you are a manufacturer or a wholesaler dependent on a manufacturer, the number of shows that you can do are limited to the amount of product that can be realistically produced per year. If you are depending on the Department of Trade to finance your shows, you will only be able to do 4 per year, and that is only while they have the money allocated for trade shows. If you do 4 shows per year, and are being funded by the DTI, you will have to return to According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product South Africa after every show, and all goods and monies have to emanate from South Africa. They will not consider any claims that are paid for with foreign money, i.e. by agents on your behalf. PLANNING THE BOOTH It is imperative that you take as little equipment with you, because when the show is done, you will either have to dispose of all your furniture/stuff, or place it in storage in the USA if you want to use it again. The DTI gives you an allowance to get your samples and equipment to the USA, but th ; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug. Examples of combination products may in y won’t pay for you to take it back home again, unless you are participating in a Pavilion show, where they will pay all your expenses. It is essential that you decide what you will do with the entire booth once the first show is finished. The DTI will also not pay the costs of warehousing in the USA and the transport of the booth to the second show from that warehouse. If you do want to go that route, you will have to pay for that yourself. A typical charge to get goods to a show is approx. $400, obviously lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together. depending on the weight and size of the shipment. It’s a good idea to set up the booth beforehand and plan exactly how you want everything to look. Pare it down to the minimum. After all, you are selling goods, not decorations. Use your imagination to exhibit the samples in the most cost effective way. Make sure that you have all the risers and decorations that you envisage. Pack all office needs, i.e. invoices, brochures (very important), staplers and spare staples, pens, etc. etc. Although there are of here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe ourse many shops around, sometimes the shows are in out of the way places, and it is not easy to get photocopies done and buy forgotten essentials. SHIPPING SAMPLES AND BOOTH EQUIPMENT “The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray” Allow plenty of time for your samples to arrive at the warehouse so that it doesn’t cost you anything extra by way of drayage. Also, although your shipping agents will give you an idea of how long your goods will take to get there, always allow an extra two weeks, because the d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations. Combination pro e can be delays with Customs Clearance and delivery. Make sure that you have clear and precise invoices accompanying the samples, with prices, tariff headings, and clearly marked as Trade Show samples which are duty free. If you are sending any seeds, pods, grasses, make sure that you have fumigation certificates. Leather and animal goods have to have a Wildlife Permit. Try and contain your booth equipment into as small a size as possible. It is easier to move compact equipment around than large, oversize p ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc allets, which cost more because of the volumetric size. BOOTH SET-UP Plan on getting to your destination at least one day before set-up day. If you have not been to the site before hand, go down to the show site and check that your samples have arrived in your booth. Check your directory entry to see that everything is correct, and familiarize yourself with the lay-out of the hall. Make sure of the time that you can start setting up, and be there promptly. If you have to go out to buy anything that you ma easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi have forgotten, now is the time to do it. Prepare your “office” so that everything you may need to write orders, give out brochures and price lists is neatly available. Make sure that all your samples are clearly marked with the prices. Once you get busy and have more than one person in the booth, you don’t want to lose a sale because the samples aren’t marked. Customers are happy to browse if you are busy, and will wait patiently if they can see everything clearly. You may also want to bring some see-thro nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically gh netting or other covering with you to tie across the booth at the end of the day. Always be on time in your booth. You will lose valuable sales if you are late coming in, or early going out. TAKING ORDERS, ARRANGING PAYMENT Always give a clear indication when you plan to ship your orders. USA customers usually work with budgets, and may ask you for shipment on a specific date. They also don’t want to have to worry with importing their goods, and won’t deal with Customs, or pay customs duties. They will and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ all ask for shipment from a USA city. The reason for this is that it makes no difference if you are shipping one carton, or one hundred cartons. The clearing charges are the same, and the customer will not happily pay those costs, which can run to $300 per shipment. This is where a logistics company can help you. You can ship your entire trade show orders to one place, and there will be only one Customs Clearance charge for the consolidated shipment. Your logistics company will then strip down the shipment, ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi and send the individual boxes onward to the customers. You will then be charged the cost of the local shipments by common carriers, i.e. UPS or FedEx. However, you can charge your customer the cost of the shipping, which is common practice and they are used to paying the UPS charges. Another problem you will encounter is accepting payment for your orders. The greater percent of your customers pay on their credit cards. Unless you have a USA company, or you have a Dollar Account in South Africa, you will not ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it. Following aspects would a be able to process cheques or credit card deposits into your South African bank account in US$. You will need a USA based company to process your credit card payments. A similar problem is acceptance of cheques, which carry high bank charges if deposited into a South African bank account. You are also at risk that the cheque may not be good. Once again, your logistics company can arrange the collection of money on your behalf. An ideal situation would be if You are a manufacturer: o Look for a reputable dd to the challenges in developing combination products: Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well? Which combination prod ogistics company, and keep a stock holding in their warehouse. In this way, you will be able to service your customers on an ongoing basis when they wish to re-order. USA customers do not like to wait for months for an order to be fulfilled. o Try and find a rep who will sell your goods. It is preferable to have someone in place all the time, rather than trying to sell from afar. o Your logistics company can arrange the picking, packing and shipping of the order. If you want to take their responsibilities cts are meaningful and rational? Which therapeutic categories to select? Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients? Do combin urther, they can do your invoicing and collecting of money on your behalf. o As soon as you have an amount of money in your trust account, the logistics company can transfer one bulk sum. This way you can save on bank charges and wire transfer charges. Each wire transfer fee costs approx. $20, with another corresponding fee in South Africa which can run at R200 or more. If you are a wholesaler/representative: o Try and arrange with the manufacturer to let you have consignment stock, which you can hold in a tions increase the patient compliance? What would be the developing cost? How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen SA warehouse. o You could follow the above scenario as far as logistics are concerned. o Your manufacturer may possibly help you with brochure and advertising costs. AFTER THE TRADE SHOW Once your first trade show is complete, you will have to decide what to do with your booth contents. As advised before, the DTI will not pay for the shipping costs to return your samples. They give you the option of selling the samples and re-couping the money. You could store the samples in a rental warehouse, but you w t? As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel ould then have to go to that warehouse at a future date to move the goods. You could warehouse the samples with a logistics company. When you next need them, you can arrange with the logistics company to forward the samples to the next trade show. You will not, however, be reimbursed by the DTI for that cost. You could abandon the samples and booth equipment. That would be costly, because you would have to replace those samples for future shows. LOGISTICS IN THE USA When you supply goods into the USA mark ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality. Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust t, you need to have good packaging. Each item needs to be in its own box and clearly labeled. Packaging is a very important part of merchandising. If you are going to use a logistics company, again, each item needs to be in its own box (unless you sell, say, a dozen items per box), and they need to have clear codes and labels. You will also have to let the logistics company know the price of each item so that packing lists can be generated for the orders. If your goods are fragile, packaging is vitally impo y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products tant. They should be securely packed in bubble wrap, and wedged into their boxes so that there is no movement when the boxes are shipped locally. All common carriers here recommend that your goods pass “the drop test” : If a box is dropped from a height, no damage will be done to the contents. They are notorious for throwing the boxes around. The same applies to airfreight consignments. You should make sure that your boxes are packed securely onto pallets and then shrink wrapped so that they don’t move. T . As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de at will also ensure that your consignments are not split up en route, causing delays in deliveries.
Always allow two extra weeks for delays in Customs Clearance, air delays, etc. Your goods will never arrive at its destination when your agents tell you they will. TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS It is important that you plan your travel to the USA very carefully. The weather plays an important part in planning your trip, as it is not uncommon for flights to be delayed or cancelled altogether due to inclement weather, ei elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements. Companies that provide selfless information through particip her snow or rain or wind, etc. This can play havoc if you haven’t left yourself enough time to arrive at your destination in order to set up your booth. It is preferable to allow an extra day earlier than the show set up day, so that you don’t have to panic if there is a delay. TAKE A VACATION Once your trade show is over, take an extra day or two to visit the city. You won’t have much time when the show is on, and you may as well take a breather before the hard work starts to supply the goods. HAVE FUN ! tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products
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