You’ve successfully grown your business and created a solid foothold in the Australian market. For a fast-growing business like yours, the natural next step is to focus on how to expand your retail business internationally. But replicating domestic success in new and unfamiliar territories requires careful planning around market conditions, increased channel complexity and regulations.
In this blog, we share the journey of two Australian companies that have leveraged cloud technologies to overcome these challenges and find enduring success in overseas markets.
The secret sauce behind Aesop’s expedited international retail expansion
Cult cosmetic company Aesop is no stranger to growth. What started in a Melbourne hair salon in 1987 has since taken the world by storm. At last count, Aesop was selling through 230 branded retail stores and 90 department store counters, spanning 22 countries with approximately 2,300 staff globally. They have grown from four products to nearly 100, with one bottle of their most popular product, Parsley Seed Anti-Oxidant Serum, sold every nine minutes.
First and foremost Aesop are known for their quality skincare products infused with aromatic plant-based and laboratory-made ingredients. But they also have a reputation for unique and exemplary retail spaces, a utilitarian branding aesthetic and environmentally-friendly packaging (introduced well before it was a trend in the beauty industry).
But there’s another less visible aspect that Aesop has credited to their success. And it’s the one thing that any organisation looking to expand their retail brand into overseas markets while maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction should have in place - a consistent global core IT model. In fact, it’s one of the key reasons why some retail brands grow faster than others.
Technology as an invisible enabler of growth
When Aesop was planning to propel its brand strategy and approach for international expansion, it made the strategic decision to replace over 10 on-premises applications that included Sage Pastel, Sage Accounting, QuickBooks, Access and numerous Excel spreadsheets with a single instance of NetSuite’s OneWorld product. This move allowed them to manage multiple subsidiaries, languages and currencies while gaining visibility across all geographies and ensuring compliance, domestic and internationally.
“The key driver for moving to NetSuite was our rapid international growth, as well as the need for flexible scalability,” said Aesop’s CIO Troy Smith following the deployment. “Our legacy systems spread across multiple markets were ill-equipped to deal with our international expansion plans and limitations quickly began to show.”
The solution addressed many potential growth hurdles for the ambitious brand. When Smith was invited to the stage at SuiteWorld 2018 - cloud vendor Oracle NetSuite’s annual gathering in Las Vegas – he pinpointed localisation as the biggest challenge the company had to overcome when rapidly expanding into international markets:
“To be able to have a platform where the compliance or security issues are already handled for us, or we don’t have to worry about the infrastructure, it makes the deployments really quick, scalable and easy. We tried to keep the core model tight and consistent around the globe so that when we rolled it out all we had to worry about was localisations and adapting it for any market requirements that we needed.”
To learn more about how Aesop rolled out NetSuite OneWorld globally to drive insane growth, with the help of NetSuite partners Annexa, read the Aesop case study.
How Life-Space Group nourished growth with technology
As trailblazers in the probiotic landscape, Life-Space Group bring the latest scientific advances in the microbiome to all consumers under brands including Evolution Health, Pentavite and Ultra Mix - their Australian-based manufacturing arm.
The group operate in a booming export-focused industry in which Australian brands like Life-Space Group are recognised and trusted internationally for their quality. In 2019 the Australian vitamin and dietary supplement industry reached AU$5.6 billion in revenue, a year-on-year increase of $5.2 billion, predominantly as a result of strong exports to China.
At the same time, rising costs, more competition, pressure on profit margins and regulatory and administrative burdens can create complex setbacks for any company’s international expansion. To capitalise on demand and grow their global footprint, Life-Space Group required a technology backbone that would ensure they could handle multiple currencies, taxation rules and regulations, and reporting structures across countries and multinational subsidiaries.
Finding the right partner is just as important as the tech
NetSuite was deployed to give the company visibility across geographies and ensure compliance while standardising core processes and managing risks. But there was a hitch. Their original NetSuite solution providers had failed to deliver the strategic and tactical support needed to ensure that Life-Space Group’s NetSuite instance was tailored to their specific needs. After all, the group were not just relying on the financial aspect of NetSuite, the solution was central to all day-to-day operations - from the supply chain and manufacturing through to reporting and data analysis.
Cloud ERP solutions are not a one size fits all solution, particularly when you are entering international markets. The critical lesson here - an experienced partner will give your organisation the best chance of success.
Life-Space Group turned to Annexa to steady their ERP ship and provide ongoing strategic advice, enabling them to enter the profitable but technologically complex Chinese market. As Life-Space Group’s CEO Eric Chen explained, “With Annexa, we are working with a very trusted partner. Our board of directors are connecting every quarter, with project managers working more closely with their team as we roll out further initiatives.”
He adds, “Growth-wise, NetSuite helped us get to different stages of the business. We've been able to automate, we've been able to have our systems flow naturally with the support of NetSuite. If it was in a manual state, trying to manage all the different aspects of the business, we certainly would not have grown at the rate that we have. If you are an enterprise looking to expand, not just domestically but overseas, NetSuite is a good tool and also a great system to facilitate insightful reporting.”
To learn more about how Life-Space Group rolled out NetSuite to expand into new territories with the help of NetSuite partner Annexa, read the Life-Space Group case study.
In this blog, we covered two forward-looking companies using technology to fulfil their vision for international growth, and how NetSuite delivered the levels of functionality needed to tackle the challenge of multiple currencies, subsidiaries and regulations to continue their growth trajectories.
Want to learn more about successful international retail brand expansion? Download our ebook to get more exclusive insights from the Aussie brands who have done it!
Annexa is a leading NetSuite partner with extensive experience designing and implementing comprehensive and customised business systems, including payroll solutions, financial management, warehouse management and ecommerce solutions.
