Good practice:

Ministry of Foreign Affairs' E-Export Program

In order to support national companies in their e-commerce way towards international expansion via e-export and to show a viable way forward the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has established 4 centers for e-commerce offerings in connection with their Trade Councils in strategic selected countries.

The centers are established in
1) Berlin, Germany
2) New York, USA
3) London, UK
4) Shanghai, China

The problems addressed by establishing the centers are the challenges involved in establishing company individual e-commerce platforms in each countries the company wants to address.

By signing up to a platform already established in the relevant countries the implementation of an e-commerce platform providing product offerings either B2C or B2B in each specific country should be relatively easy although the platform owner will typically take a transaction-based cut for each product sold.

The Trade Council advices the companies about relevant platforms and with some platform owners The Trade Council already have an agreement, which can be utilized for companies signing up to the platform. The Trade council currently has agreements with Amazon, Tmall, Alibaba, Wayfair, Newegg, Fruugo and eBay.

The main stakeholder is The Trade Council and the primary beneficiaries are the companies and the platform owners which are brought together. The secondary beneficiary is The Trade Council as they have additional offerings they can sell to the companies.

The resources needed in the current setup is in principle one to two additional persons at each strategic selected countries.

Establishing an international e-commerce platform can be a challenge as each countries often have different cultures and different legislations compared to Denmark and by utilizing a platform approach these obstacles are handled by the platform provider.

The evidence for success is founded in the fact that The Trade Council has up to now (Marts 2020) supported approximately 100 companies with the e-export program into e-commerce platforms (primarily Tmall and Amazon).

The practice is considered an easy way to internationalization of a domestic company and its product offerings. The platform providers often have very specific and local ways of operating and with The Trade Council facilitating the company’s engagement with the platform providers it becomes a “dual” short cut – both easing the engagement with the e-commerce platform provider and easing the entry into the specific country as product provider.