Vinyl And Water Weight Loss

Aiming big, a new company is turning tradition on its head and exporting vinyl exercise sauna suit to Scandinavia, but says America is its real target. They have always looked at America as being our biggest market, which is why we didn't go there first, purely because you've only got one shot at it, informed one of three founders of Halo Health Systems.

If you go into the American market and say you can do this and they say great, let's have 10 times that many and you've got no hope of doing it, you'll never get the credibility to go back again. After two years of development, the company has been selling its infra-red saunas in Europe for over a year.

As well as Scandinavia, the product is now sold in Germany, Austria, the Benelux countries and places as diverse as Iceland, Estonia and Lithuania. The company exports several containers to Europe every two months and Mr. Black says it is on track to export in excess of $5 million worth of saunas in its first 24 months of production. There are plans to launch in Australia in a week's time and a recent decision to display the product at the New Zealand Trade Centre has led to possibilities in the Middle East.

Mr. Black hopes to begin negotiations with American distributors in a few months. Basically this company wants to cover the world, but you've really got to do it piece by piece. The US is going to be the focus for the next six months. Rather than test the product in New Zealand, where it has been available for a month, market size was also the deciding factor in choosing Europe. They wanted big sales orders up front. They are not disappointed at selling one at a time, but when they can sell 35, 50 or 100 from day one, it's just a simple economic decision.

Mr Black says the company needed initial sales to sustain it while ironing-out problems before targeting the US. Other reasons for choosing Europe were his contacts in the leisure industry, gained over 10 years from importing German and Dutch sunbeds, and Europe's ready-made market. Europeans are already in tune with saunaing; they are familiar with it health wise, so it saves market conversion to the product.

Orders stemmed from the product's launch at a trade show in Dusseldorf 14 months ago. Sometimes Mr Black finds the length of time other companies take to make decisions frustrating. The Germans, especially, are into long term relationships. The company took three months to close the distributor agreement. It is experiencing similar problems in Britain, where it is currently negotiating with three companies. Receiving no outside help, development of the product cost $300,000 plus $45,000 for the trade show. They already had their own businesses, so they used what they had and still had cash flow for them.

Although it was a side step in business for him, Mr Black says it was something completely different for his two partners, furniture designers Bob Jensen and Dave Wood - the real design inspiration behind the product.