Manufacturers price for export by taking the domestic list price and subtracting a discount. That number means nothing to a distributor in Accra or Abidjan, because it has nothing to do with what the product will actually cost by the time it reaches their warehouse, or what they can charge once it is on a shelf.
Ex-works price versus export price
Your production cost plus your margin is the ex-works price. It is also the number a first-time exporter usually quotes and calls the export price, which is the first mistake. The export price is what your buyer actually sees once freight, insurance and duty are added — and if those are not built into the number, you are not quoting a price, you are quoting a starting point for a negotiation you will lose.
Landed cost: the number the distributor compares
The distributor does not compare your ex-works price against a competitor’s ex-works price. They compare landed cost against landed cost — what it costs to get the goods into their warehouse, cleared and ready to sell. Which Incoterm you quote, and the duty rate applying to your product, both sit inside that number; get either wrong and your export pricing loses to a supplier who never had a better product, just a more accurate one. The Incoterm you choose decides who is carrying freight and insurance up to that point, and it belongs in the pricing conversation before it becomes a shipping detail.
Distributor margin, quoted as a range
A distributor buys to resell, not to use. If your export price leaves them 8% and the category norm in that market is 20-25%, they will not take the deal, however good the product is. Ask what margin comparable products carry in that market before you quote, and build your export pricing back from the shelf rather than forward from your cost. This is also the point to agree in writing, alongside territory and volume commitments, because a margin that is not written down gets renegotiated the first time a competitor undercuts it.
The retail price back-check
Before you finalise a number, work it forward to the shelf: your export price, plus the distributor’s margin, plus any local duty or VAT still to apply, plus the retailer’s own margin where one sits between the distributor and the consumer. If that shelf price sits above what the market pays for the category, the deal fails at the till, not in the negotiation — you simply find out about it later, after the container has shipped.
Volume tiers instead of blanket discounts
A single discount for a large first order looks generous and teaches you nothing about the relationship. Tiered pricing tied to actual purchase volumes rewards the distributor who reorders, instead of the one who simply negotiated hardest on the first PO, and it gives you a number to point to when the next distributor, in another territory, asks why theirs is different.
Build the price from the shelf backwards, not from the factory forwards. If you cannot get comparable retail pricing for the category in that market, that is the first call to make — before you quote an export price at all.
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