Expanding to 20 Countries: What We've Learned About the World
When I started Boxiki in 2015, I was shipping packages from my apartment in Vancouver. The idea of selling outside of Canada and the US felt like science fiction. Now, in 2020, we're selling in over 20 countries across five continents, and I've learned more about the world from our order data than I ever did from a textbook.
It Started with the UK
The United Kingdom was our first international market, and it remains one of our strongest. British customers, as it turns out, are obsessed with travel accessories. Our RFID sleeves and passport holders sell incredibly well there — probably because the Brits are some of the most prolific travelers in the world. (Also, they write the most polite reviews. "Quite good, this" from a British customer is basically a five-star rave.)
Expanding to the UK taught us our first lesson about international selling: what works in North America doesn't automatically work everywhere else. Packaging that felt premium in the US looked "a bit much" to UK customers. Descriptions that sounded enthusiastic to Americans sounded "overly keen" to the British. We had to learn to speak a slightly different language — even though it was technically the same language.
Australia: The Kitchen Down Under
Australia surprised us. We expected travel products to be our top sellers there too — Australians love to travel, after all. Instead, our kitchen tools took off. Cutting boards, utensils, cooking accessories — Australians bought them at nearly twice the rate of any other category.
When we dug into the reviews, we started to understand why. Australian customers kept mentioning hosting, barbecues, and cooking at home. There's a food culture there that's vibrant and social, and our kitchen tools fit right into it. One reviewer in Melbourne wrote, "Bought this for our Sunday barbie. The neighbours are jealous." That one made our day.
Germany: Where Quality Is Everything
German customers taught us the most about quality. Germans have incredibly high standards for products — and they will tell you, in detail, when something doesn't meet them. Our first batch of reviews from Germany was humbling. Products that received glowing reviews in the US got methodical, analytical critiques from German customers.
"The stitching on the left side is 2mm off-center," one review read. "The plastic cap has a slight burr that could be smoothed. Otherwise, functional." That's a three-star review in Germany. In the US, it would have been five stars.
We took every piece of that feedback seriously, and our products are better for it. German customers made us raise our game.
The UAE Order That Changed Everything
In early 2020, we received a large order from the United Arab Emirates. It was exciting — our first significant Middle Eastern order. And then the logistics nearly broke us.
Customs regulations we didn't know existed. Shipping timelines we couldn't predict. Documentation requirements that took our team days to navigate. The order that should have taken a week to fulfill took almost a month.
But we figured it out. We partnered with a logistics company that specialized in Middle Eastern markets. We learned about local import requirements. And when the order finally arrived, the customer was so impressed with the products (and our persistence) that they placed three more orders within a month.
That experience taught us that international expansion isn't just about listing your products on a new marketplace. It's about understanding the entire ecosystem — logistics, customs, culture, expectations — and being willing to learn on the fly.
Japan: The Packaging Lesson
Japanese customers care about packaging in a way that no other market does. The attention to detail, the presentation, the feeling of opening a product — it's all part of the experience. Our standard packaging, which was perfectly fine for North America and Europe, felt incomplete to Japanese customers.
We're still working on this one. But the lesson is clear: every market has its own definition of "quality," and if you want to earn trust globally, you have to respect those differences.
What 20 Countries Has Taught Us
The biggest lesson? People everywhere want the same thing: products that work well and companies that treat them with respect. The details vary — packaging here, communication style there — but the core is universal.
We're a small company from Vancouver, and somehow our products have ended up in homes on every inhabited continent. That's wild. And we're just getting started.
— Stan