How To Find Importers And Buyers For Export

by Yashi Ganguly Writer

Exporting of goods involves selling the goods to a buyer in another country. The goods cannot be exported unless the destination to which they have to reach is confirmed. It would mean that for an exporter of goods in a country, there need to be importers at the other end who would be willing to buy the goods and get them imported into the country. It is a typical buyer-seller situation, wherein a seller of goods needs to identify the buyer. However, in international trade, the situation is a bit more complex than a buyer-seller situation.

One of the key elements in international trade is logistics. The goods actually move between two ports. When someone sends a product from one port, there has to be a receiver at the other end to accept them. So, an exporter, before exporting the goods needs to indentify the buyers for export. This exercise of indentifying the buyer is important as it would initiate and complete the whole transaction. The seller or the exporter would be trading a specific set of goods, for which buyer has to be identified who would be interested in buying those products and accept the conditions of sale by the exporter. Identifying an international buyer would require to search beyond the conventional means used for a domestic buyer.

Earlier, there used to be a limited set of importers of repute who are recognized by the exporters from other countries, and most of the import volumes used to be determined by them. In most of the cases, the exporter receives a short end of the stick, as they do not know any other entity who would be buying the goods from them. In other scenarios, large exporters would be able to attract many buyers of their products due to the reputation that they have built. A small-time exporter would not have this advantage as they would not be able to attract the parties willing to buy goods from them.

However, this situation has now changed with the availability of databases which contain the information of the list of entities who export the goods and list of buyers for export. Apart from the contact and address details, information such as the nature of goods that they deal with, their trading history, etc is also provided in the database. This helps the exporter to identify the right entities that are willing and capable of buying their goods.