In these past few days I have come to see firsthand how the good reputation of a company in a market is only built through time. The brief story I’m about to tell you is about Pozza 1865 Srl, a well-established and venerable company located in the province of Vicenza which produces outdoor playgrounds and with whom I have worked as an export manager for many years.

About 3 years ago we worked hard at introducing the company into the United Arab Emirates market. We started participating in trade fairs, made agreements with a local distributor and started introducing our Made in Italy product line. The Emirate market was coming from years of Chinese imports and was looking for higher quality products. A question we were frequently asked was whether our materials were resistant to the sun and the high temperatures typical of that area. In the introductory phase references are very important, but we did not have them in that market. Despite this we managed to obtain our first orders.

But then, work slowed.

Today, however, the company can play a card that it initially did not have. As you can see from the picture, our first park – installed in 2015 – is still in excellent condition and with very bright colors. Our local distributor took this photo and posted it on social media and the municipal government, who trusted us three years ago, called to congratulate us last week. Now we no longer have just words to convince potential customers, we also have the references.

You need time to build a reputation. It took us three years to build this one. There are no shortcuts.

I have already talked about How to choose an international distributor