_Exporia.png)
The MTPConnect Podcast
The MTPConnect Podcast Series connects with the people and the issues behind Australia’s growing medical technologies, biotechnologies and pharmaceuticals sector.
The MTPConnect Podcast
Ready to Export Your Medtech to Europe?
Dive into another episode coming to you from MTPConnect’s Development Workshop Series held recently in Sydney for 52 start-up organisations from around Australia. The 2-day program was a terrific opportunity for companies participating in our Accelerator programs to get ‘investor ready’.
Exportia Australia’s Christelle Damiens, an entrepreneur and award-winning author, shared her insights in the workshop “Accessing Global Markets”. Christelle is described as the go-to person for Australian companies looking to expand into the European market and she shared her methodologies, winning strategies and key learnings from more than 20 years of business development in Europe.
Christelle joined host Caroline Duell at the event to discuss the complexities of the European regulatory landscape, some advice on export readiness, and the value of outsourcing sales and marketing to European experts and finding the right distribution partners to help you scale.
This is the MTP Connect podcast, connecting you with the people behind the life-saving innovations driving Australia's growing life sciences sector from bench to bedside for better health and wellbeing. Mtp Connect acknowledges the traditional owners of country that this podcast is recorded on and recognises that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are Australia's first storytellers and the holders of first science knowledge.
Caroline Duell:Hello and welcome to the MTP Connect podcast. I'm Caroline Duell. We're coming to you from Sydney for MTP Connect's Development Workshop Series. Joining me is Christelle Damien, Managing Director of Exportia, who has today been running a capability workshop on accessing global markets. As an entrepreneur and award-winning author, Christelle is the go-to person for Australian companies looking to expand into the European market. Christelle works with CEOs around the world to develop a winning business strategy in Europe and she has a track record in scaling small businesses to their first million and beyond. Welcome, Christelle, hi, Caroline, nice to meet you. Christelle, you've just published your third book for small businesses who want to scale their business internationally and it's called Is it Time to Start Exporting to Europe, Lessons Learned from Exporters Globally. It was published this year in March Is now a good time for Australian medical start-ups and SMEs to be moving into the European market.
Christelle Damiens:I think it's a good time for many different reasons. So there are a lot of initiatives at the European Union level to improve healthcare, increase digitization. There's a lot of chronic disease rise, but also with the aging population, there are a lot of increased needs for better healthcare, and so there are a lot of initiatives out there to improve patient care. And also what the European Union has been doing is following COVID. There has been a lot of failure, I would say, at the European level that have been identified, and so the European Union is also trying to fix those. So there are initiatives in terms of communication between countries and alert systems, so that you know more digitization of the health care, more communication intra-country. So there's a lot of initiatives around that that are very interesting. And, of course, like any country, there are strong incentives to build the pharma industry and the autonomy of the European Union in terms of production of pharmaceuticals. So there's a lot of initiatives at the European level to do that.
Caroline Duell:How important is it for startups to start considering Europe as a market to enter? I mean everyone sort of thinks let's go to the that. How important is it for startups to start considering Europe as a market to enter? I mean everyone sort of thinks let's go to the US. Why should they be thinking let's go to Europe?
Christelle Damiens:So I'm going to put a caveat to what I just said before. There's one impediment at the moment for the European market and we all have to be realistic about it. The new regulatory approval process is still over, so the MDR has been implemented, has come to force. It's created a lot of backlog in terms of processing time of the MDR and the IVDR. So that means that companies that are wanting to go into the European market they're going to have to take into account that timeline. It's quite a long processing time. So that's the only caveat I have to say about that.
Christelle Damiens:Otherwise, why should they consider the European market? First of all, australia has quite good success stories overall and has a good reputation in terms of medical devices. I mean, it's not the case of many industry sectors, but it's one sector where Australia really has a good reputation in Europe. So that's one of the key assets I think that we have. And also, it is a fairly easy market to enter. There's not many barriers to it and you can really start by. Once you've chosen your market. You can really start little by little with just a distribution partner. You don't have to invest in an entity to make it happen for a small business in the European market and I think for a startup or a small business, not having those first investments, which are quite heavy, to setting up an entity and hiring people at the start is also a good thing, and that's a great thing about Europe.
Caroline Duell:If you're a budding exporter and you have a medical device or a therapeutic, where do you start and, more importantly, how do you know when your business is ready?
Christelle Damiens:So we have a export readiness diagnostic tool that is available for free on our website, so I can point people to that. But in that diagnostic tool what we check is is your technology proven? So do you have customers that are paying for it, liking it and paying for it at the right price and that can be your referrals? Are you uniquely positioned? Do you know your positioning in comparison to your competitors and have you done a bit of research at the global level? I mean, you don't need to know straight away all the European competitors. If you come from Australia, that's okay. Is your intellectual property protected, or do you have an IP strategy to make sure that competitors are not already there exactly in the same field? And then, do you comply with the European regulation? Because without compliance you cannot sell. So that's some of the things that we check first before, and that's when you know you're ready.
Christelle Damiens:We also like companies to have some revenue to be able to sustain their effort into the European market. So we don't like the startups that come and go because they're going to lose credibility and we're trying to make them look like they're a credible player. And so, with Europeans always thinking long term, you have to show you're here for the long game and if you go into the market, oh, we're running out of money, withdrawing and then coming back again. You're losing the whole. You're losing your investment, you're losing your credibility and it's really a waste of time. So really having some revenue to be able to sustain that effort in the long term is key.
Caroline Duell:So you work with CEOs and clients all around the world who are looking at this challenge of getting into Europe. Are there any common mistakes that companies make when they're trying to expand internationally?
Christelle Damiens:Yes. So some of the common mistakes is to start by setting up an entity and hiring people straight away without knowing where is their market and having tested it. And that means that very commonly for Australian companies, even for US companies that we work with, they would set up an entity. I mean a bit less so in the last few years since Brexit, but the normal tendency was we're going to Europe, we're setting up an entity in the UK, we're hiring in the UK and then five years down the track, they're like oh, actually our best market was not the UK and it was really hard for us to build growth in Germany, whereas that was our best market.
Christelle Damiens:So in that book actually that's my third book one of the questions I asked the case studies is when you enter the European market, what do you wish you had done differently? And a lot of them said I wish I actually had started where our time, our total addressable market, the largest total addressable market, was. We should have started by Germany. We would have been in such a much better position today. So it's about choosing, really prioritizing and choosing your top countries, starting there, testing the appetite, being very focused, making them work, setting up the team to support those early customers and setting up the distribution partners in those countries and then scaling to additional countries, so not the other way around.
Caroline Duell:You're not doing a total European takeover per se, it's just country by country.
Christelle Damiens:Yes, actually, you think that going worldwide would go faster. It won't. It's really about proving your model and testing ground in one or two markets, making it work and then replicating it in other markets, and that will go faster after.
Caroline Duell:How complex is it to navigate the different European regulatory frameworks for registering and approving medical products?
Christelle Damiens:So the European Union has the MDR, so that's the CMR approval process that is the same for every single european country. The uk now has its own system, which is mainly based on the previous what's called mdd some of the listeners would know what I'm talking about which is a previous regulatory medical device regulatory framework and um on top of that. So that's basically the top two, and then you're going to have to work at country level to check what are the additional guidelines from the medical, the health authority locally. So unfortunately, you're going to have to navigate that country by country, being guided by, you know, the, the main medical society in your specialty or your key opinion leaders can also guide you through that what's your top tip for budding european exporters sort of right now?
Christelle Damiens:so the top tip is really to because I constantly see that, so I'm going to have to say it it's about distributors. So it's always you know, startups and SMEs they get approached by a distributor, they get really excited because that means they think that it's all happening and so they sign them up with very wrong terms and then it doesn't work. So, really, coming back to the focus, it all has to start and all the effort and focus of the small team has to be on those top two markets, top two countries, even just one country, and then you go into that market, mapping out the distributor landscape, and then you assess them and you are actually conducting some due diligence and engaging with them. So it's not waiting and being passive and waiting for something to happen and hoping you, hoping you can sign that agreement. It's really about being proactive in choosing that partner.
Christelle Damiens:And then the other mistake is to expect that once you sign an agreement, you can sit down and relax because it's all going to happen. It won't happen. So you really have to drive that distribution relationship really hard, set some objective together, but also work together with the distributor, find the sales champion within that distribution partner. Who's going to be your early runner who's going to go around and sell your technology and work with them to create the initial sales. That's what's going to drive the success with that distributor to get sales. So that's your focus really.
Caroline Duell:Christelle, what's your background in the MedTech and pharma space?
Christelle Damiens:I'm a pure salesperson, so I sold technology originally in IBM before I. So that's not MedTech, that's technology. And then when I came to Australia and I started my business in 2006, because Australia has quite a good industry I started to work with clients in the medtech space and so we've conducted over 26 projects in the last 18 years in the medtech space 26 projects in the last 18 years in the med tech space. So we had patient risk management software, we've had tarification software, we've had implant dermal substitute, we've had a whole range of different types of products, treatment tables that we've worked with over the years. So that's how we kind of built our expertise. But it's really for us and I can see because we work across different sectors it's all about a technology sale and user adoption, and that's the same process.
Caroline Duell:So your business Exportia it's like an export consulting firm and, as you said, it's been running for nearly 18 years and you provide an outsourced European sales and marketing team. Is that correct to clients who are looking for that? Yes, so that's what we provide.
Christelle Damiens:So we package it step by step. It's not like we are going to go, you know, on a multi-year agreement with a small business straight away. We kind of go step by step, by first, you know, finding out what is the key market for them in Europe and then building the strategy and identifying the key players. So we've built over time in the last 18 years some packages that help those companies, take you every step of the way in Europe, and we've built that on packages. So one step at a time, and then, once we're successful, we move to the next level and then we move to the next level. So that's how we've done it and it works quite well for start-up and small businesses because it's quite flexible for them.
Christelle Damiens:It's not so such a long-term engagement and board members like that too.
Caroline Duell:so it's a clever way really of having it sort of almost like your own in-house team, but but they're not in-house.
Christelle Damiens:We report back as if we were a sales team within the small business. The benefit to the small business is they look like they have a European team and they've got local support that speaks German, French, Italian, Spanish. So that's really one of our added value and we can navigate across market very smoothly and as we make one market successful, we can move to the next and then help our clients set up their team, work with them, hand over and then go to the next and then go again to the next.
Christelle Damiens:So that's how we work.
Caroline Duell:Yo u know language is one of those barriers for many um Australian companies, but you know you have taken dozens of Australian businesses into Europe using this successful model. Is there a bit of a culture clash that we need to be aware of when doing business in Europe, and are Australian companies welcome there?
Christelle Damiens:Yes, so they definitely are welcome because Europeans are very open to foreign players. They used to have a lot of different nationalities and a lot of you know players coming from overseas. That's the diverse nature of Europe, so there's no problem with that, no barrier to entry there. In terms of things that Australians have to watch out is sometimes the way they present their material and the side of the translation. And having that type of document ready for customers is quite. It's easy to fix, it's easy to organize and it's a nice added value and having. What I find also is when we work with those small businesses, sometimes they don't have their value articulated properly, so it's hard to communicate it to the market and it's hard to convince because of that. So that's one of the key things for them to watch out.
Caroline Duell:So be respectful of the language of the country where you're looking to develop relationships.
Christelle Damiens:Yes, so being mindful of that, and it's also an asset because so many non-European companies coming to the market do that very badly. So with some of our customers we've done that really well that the Europeans really appreciated it and really found that. That's amazing that an Australian company had, you know, everything ready, from the data sheet to the user manual, which you have to as well. But having that you know already prepared in the countries and in the languages where they were needed is really a good asset to have.
Caroline Duell:Can you tell us of any small companies in the medtech sector that have cracked it in Europe recently, that you know some examples?
Christelle Damiens:I have one that is quite close to my heart because we've worked for them for about 10 years, and so we did introduce the healthcare product. It's a safety product for respiratory protection and they're called Clean Space, and I think over the years they've done an excellent job at building their success in the European market. So that's one I can name, and I think they're very commendable.
Caroline Duell:What did you think of the workshops today?
Christelle Damiens:I think they were so interesting to see those different perspectives. I was so pleased to hear the journey of Michael with nanosonics. There were such interesting learnings and I kind of was happy to see that some of our learnings for us at Exportia over the last 18 years were kind of the same as nanosonics. You know, Signing large distribution agreements with large companies doesn't mean that it's all going to happen. You still have to work really hard with those distributors and make it happen. So some of the lessons were common so I particularly enjoyed that session.
Caroline Duell:Well, I know that all the start-ups and SMEs here at this development series have found your session really valuable and thanks for sharing some of those tips with us and the aspects of looking at exporting to Europe.
Christelle Damiens:Well, thank you so much for having me.
Caroline Duell:You've been listening to the MTP Connect podcast. This podcast is produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people here in Narm, Melbourne. Thanks for listening to the show. If you love what you heard, share our podcast and follow us for more. Until next time.
.png)
_Exporia.png)