The situation.

Africa was a white spot for a manufacturer of seasonal consumer products. Not a failed market — an unattempted one. Over the years a handful of companies had approached them directly and been given an account, but none lasted. Most couldn’t meet minimum order quantities for export, and quietly fell away. The company had already used a chamber of commerce partner search service. What came back was a list of companies you could have assembled from a search engine.

Why those searches don’t work.

They tell you who exists. They don’t tell you how route to market actually functions in that country, who has real penetration with the retailers that matter, or which of these businesses has the capacity to scale rather than just the appetite. That takes being there — walking the trade, seeing whose product is on which shelf, and working out what separates the serious operators from the rest.

What I found.

I had my area manager for North Africa at the time identify a company with genuine reach into the right retailers, carrying non-competing brands, and with the balance sheet to grow. What they didn’t have was any experience of this product category.

That’s the point where most appointments quietly fail.

There’s a long start-up window — language, category learning, import regulation, and a big first inventory commitment before any of it pays back. Nobody says out loud who’s carrying that cost, and the relationship sours before it’s begun.

What I did about it.

I saw a neighbouring North African market that had already been through exactly that window, with a distributor who’d come out the other side as a genuine brand expert. I had my area manager broker a cooperation between them — shared training costs, shared marketing assets, and the established partner’s product mix passed over rather than the new one learning it by trial.

The outcome.

Significant listings with a major French-owned retail chain within weeks of launch. Year one sales came in at more than four times the manufacturer’s own budget — reached without either distributor carrying the full cost of the ramp-up alone.