The markets we are working toward, described honestly.

A new agency that claims twenty markets has twenty markets it does not understand. We picked two groups because they share a structure we can work with: imported premium food is normal rather than exotic, a professional importer layer exists between the producer and the retailer, English is workable in commercial correspondence, and Australian provenance already carries a positive association rather than needing to be explained from nothing.

There is a practical reason too. Both groups sit on shipping lanes out of Australian ports with reasonable frequency and transit times, which matters when the product has a shelf life and the buyer has a shelf to fill.

• the UAE and the wider Gulf. Dubai and Abu Dhabi as the entry point, a re-export role into the rest of the region, heavy hospitality and gifting demand, and the most demanding labelling and certification requirements of anywhere we work.
• Singapore and premium Asia. A short freight leg, a sophisticated retail and restaurant scene, and an existing familiarity with Australian food that means less explaining and more comparing.

The buyer in both is usually an importer or a distributor rather than the retailer itself. That matters because an importer buys differently from a shop: they want a specification, a landed cost they can model, a shelf life that leaves them room, and confidence that a reorder in four months will be the same product. They are also the party who holds the import licence and who will handle in market labelling, which is why an ex works price from the producer is usually the cleanest starting point.

Both markets also punish inconsistency harder than they reward novelty. A distinctive Australian product will get a first order on curiosity. It gets a second order on the batch being identical, the documents being right and the delivery arriving when it was promised. That is why the requirements set out on the category pages are worth reading before the market pages: the market decides what it wants, but the category decides whether a producer can deliver it.

Not by flying somewhere. In sequence: confirm which of your lines can legally be sold in the destination and what the label needs to say; set an ex works price you can hold for a defined period; prepare a specification sheet, a product image and a sample set that can be shipped quickly; decide the smallest order you can profitably fill, because a first order is almost always small; and be reachable within a day when a question comes back, because an importer comparing two suppliers will choose the one who answered.

Our part is the introduction and keeping it moving. We do not hold stock, we do not take title, we do not appear on the invoice, and we are paid a disclosed commission out of the producer's own price only after an order has shipped and the producer has been paid. The categories these markets buy are set out under premium Australian food categories, and if you want to check the entity and the disclosures before any of this, the trust centre has the registration numbers and the gaps in one place.