Logistics, language and people's habits: the complexity of localization

[tanjimajuha20]

In order for a Russian company's solution to be in demand on a foreign market, it must be localized - the company must be registered in a local jurisdiction, the product must be adapted to local consumer characteristics, and business processes must be restructured in accordance with the new conditions.

Vyacheslav Bogdan, CEO and malta whatsapp number database co-founder of the local brands marketplace Flowwow, said that in 2022 the company began the process of entering the UK, UAE and Brazil, and in October 2023 the number of purchases abroad increased 12 times compared to the same period last year. "We localized products for each market. But we learned about some details after the launch. For example, in the UK we faced logistical problems: there is a fee to enter the city center, and many sellers refused to deliver, which reduced the product catalog. As a result, we taught partners to work with delivery zones and set them up in the application," he said.

Vyacheslav Bogdan noted that there were also problems with logistics in the UAE: "Since the country is actively growing and being built up, new skyscrapers do not always appear on Google maps promptly. This leads to the point being automatically transferred to a neighboring building, which confuses couriers. To solve this problem, we connected other maps and asked partners to focus on the address, not the point." And in Brazil, according to him, the company encountered the following peculiarity: in Flowwow products, by default, entering a phone number begins with the country code, but local residents are not used to entering it, so they did not enter all the necessary numbers, did not receive SMS and could not complete registration.

As noted by Alexander Krushinsky, Director of the Voice Digital Technologies Department at BSS, in the CIS countries - Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan - localization of products is also required, work on which takes from six months to nine months.