New Zealand based company specialising in safety electronics for seagoing vessels ranging from small leisure craft to light commercial. The company has designed and developed a range of unique intelligent devices that enhance vessel safety and protect property and lives.
Within 18 months of formation the company had already established interest in the product worldwide and orders from overseas distributors. For the near to medium term, the company needed to make some decisions about markets to focus on, sales and distribution models, internal structuring and funding in order to take best advantage of the opportunity afforded them by a growing international market.
Working closely with the company founder we began a process of identifying the most likely customer profiles and use cases that had thus far been observed. We also investigated the existing distribution model and channel partners. Initially we undertook a range of targeted research, identifying and understanding the various markets for the technology, along with carefully developed use cases specifying the reasons customers would buy and recommend the product.
Once the key buyer profiles and associated vertical markets had been identified, we proceeded to build a market development strategy. The key here was to create a plan that could be executed and that could also be used to inform the process of raising capital – in terms of market opportunity and also likely costs of pursuing the opportunity more aggressively. During the planning and early implementation stages, we coordinated and chaired a Strategic Advisory Board for regular meetings.
The company was able to continue developing existing market relationships and their pursuit of advancing R&D for their product line whilst the plans were built. The resulting market development plan served to guide initial business development work and was also used by the company in the development of their approach to raising capital, which they successfully completed in 2010.