This is a topic to which I will be returning frequently in the coming months: the impact and importance of emerging markets. Global recession or no, the world is flat with respect to supply chains and that means how you think about where you do business should be unbounded.
For those companies with a global sales footprint, there is a new issue which is rapidly becoming of pressing importance. I heard the phrase “emerging markets labeling” [EML] from a colleague recently and I thought: that truly sums up the issue here. Don’t let “emerging markets” fool you: we’re talking serious sums of money, serious markets, serious potential for won or lost revenues for anyone even tangentially involved.
How serious? As we’ve blogged in the past, there are important places like, say, Turkey, where you can’t ship unless you have in place labeling software to produce GS1 compliant labels for the Turkish market. Turkey, as we reported earlier this year, is a $2B (that’s a “B” as in billion) a year medical device market. They have a national law that makes GS1 labeling system mandatory. You don’t have GS1 compliance in place for Turkey? You don’t sell there.
That’s “just” Turkey. That’s “just” $2,000,000,000 a year.
If you’re reading this blog, then you know we’re all about GS1 and, being experts in the topic of labeling, providing a single, clear and well-vetted information source. Emerging Market Labeling is spot on target for this topic, even though it would seem to be much bigger than GS1 compliance, it is, in fact, GS1 labeling and GS1 system compliance that makes correct labeling for emerging markets the hot topic now.
It is the elephant in the room when it comes to discussing supply chain and doing business. So let’s ask about that elephant: how are you doing (or, far more likely, going to do) “emerging markets labeling”?
If you don’t know your answer, then effectively your answer is: you’re not. And if that’s the case, your organization has effectively decided to not do business in emerging markets. Your loss will be someone else’s gain. As we say here at Loftware, if you can’t label, you can’t ship and if you can’t ship, you’re not in business.
And if you are looking emerging markets labeling straight in the eye, have a plan to label, you will be able to ship. And you will have new business in growing markets that are already measured in the billions.
Filed under: Bar code, Brand Integrity, C-Level Issues, Emerging Markets Labeling, GS1, Global Standards
[...] So in a way, it surprises me — and yet doesn’t surprise me — to see this news over Bloomberg the morning of December 1st about a UK venture capital firm, Actis Capital, LLC, that has raised $2.9 billion for… drum roll please… ‘Emerging Markets.’ [For an introduction to Loftware's vision of emerging market business opportunities vis a vis GS1, please see this inaugural post by Christopher Little.] [...]
[...] by sterling1 My boss Christopher Little predicted it in his December 1 post entitled, ‘The Importance of Emerging Markets Labeling & GS1 Labeling Solutions.’ Now, just a few weeks later comes a major validation that emerging markets are where major [...]