 Good morning and welcome to this, the third and final session in a series of events designed to focus attention on the continental European market. We at the IEEA are partnering with Enterprise Ireland to bring this series of events to you. We've got a great lineup of speakers today, a few standalone speakers, a panel of business people who are involved in pan-European business we hope that their insights will help you businesses interested in accessing the European market or deepening your relationship with players in that market. So looking forward to a long and productive discussion over the next 19 minutes on a whole range of issues on the relation topic. So to kick off and quite appropriately we have the head of Enterprise Ireland, a partner in this series of events, Leo Clancy who will give an overview of issues and topics around Ireland's relationship and Irish businesses relationship with continental Europe in the context inevitably of the shift that's occurred following the Britain's departure from the European Union. So with that Leo if I could hand over to you to take the floor and get proceedings underway, thank you. Thank you Dan and good morning to members of the Irish business community, members of the IEEA and our guest speakers. It's a real pleasure and privilege to have the opportunity to open this event today. The third and final webinar in this Europe is Our Future series which we are running jointly of course with the Institute of International and European Affairs. The title of the series highlights Enterprise Ireland's strategy to put a strong focus on the EU markets. These markets will play a pivotal role in Ireland's future and they will change our trade landscape. As the government's trade and technology agency Enterprise Ireland is absolutely committed to increasing the capability and impact of Irish Enterprise generally. The Enterprise Ireland team of 850 professionals works with over 5,000 Irish businesses who employ 220,000 people here. Our team and 10 offices across Ireland works hand in hand with these Irish businesses providing them with the support to develop their capability so that they can grow successfully over time. Our supports are focused on areas like innovation, operational competence, skills and finance. And as we have a small domestic market in Ireland and as business owners will know most Irish companies must export to succeed in scale. Our 40 overseas offices work hand in hand with these same Irish businesses helping them to enter and scale in overseas markets in order to deliver export growth. At the end of 2020 these exports were valued at over 25 billion euros. The result of a decade of very strong growth by Enterprise Ireland black companies. Customers in more than 60 countries across five continents are buying 60 percent more Irish products and services than they did 10 years ago with huge growth. However we are ambitious when we realize that more growth equates to more jobs and increased prosperity in Ireland and in the markets we serve which I'll come back to in due course. Our ambition for 2021 is to support the delivery of an export-led recovery, returning export growth to pre-pandemic levels in the years ahead and leveraging what is a very strong global recovery. The title of today's webinar, Embedding Your Business in the EU, speaks to this ambition. While the US and the UK markets remain incredibly important for Irish businesses there's a really strong case and a compelling case to be made for increasing our focus on the eurozone. The eurozone markets by which I mean those markets will adopt to the euro are a cornerstone of Enterprise Ireland's strategy. We launched a eurozone strategy in 2017 and since then exports to the eurozone have increased by 33% and growth in Enterprise Ireland's client exports have increased by 15% in 2019 alone. This export success is testament to the innovative products and services of Irish Enterprise and the strong and growing relationships they have in Europe. However we're not finished. Our exports to the eurozone at 5.85 billion euros equal less than 80% of our exports to the UK. Now the UK is a very long-standing and the closest market that Ireland has but the eurozone is five times the size of the UK in terms of population and GDP and it's a huge opportunity. The size of that untapped opportunity is enormous and now in a time of change and disruption we can strengthen our relationships and integrate and embed our businesses and our solutions within the EU. A recent trade mission led by the Taunish to Paris and Berlin was the first in-person trade mission in 18 months and that these were the first markets as an indication of the importance we attribute to these and all eurozone markets. The benefits of the European Union are very clear. The single market was designed to be just that. A large market of countries in close proximity to each other that facilitates virtuous trade without visible barriers like tariffs and customs procedures but also without less visible barriers like different regulatory requirements. The single currency which is going to be a topic of discussion with the panel later on this morning makes the eurozone a particularly attractive proposition for SMEs reducing complexity and risk that might come with currency volatility having to manage your business in various currencies and other aspects so that is a huge opportunity in and of itself and we are in a time of disruption. That disruption brings challenges but it also brings opportunities and I'd like to highlight three areas in particular disruption in the EU that we believe creates significant opportunities for Irish business. The first is localization and changes in supply chains. Some of these are undoubtedly negative. Both Brexit and Covid have created significant challenges for global supply chains including for Irish businesses but there is a clear move in Europe by manufacturers in particular to strengthen their reliability of their supply chains so that they are more easily accessed from the geographic and regulatory and administrative perspectives. In some cases this involves new suppliers in the single market and ideally within the eurozone. In other cases though it involves building new manufacturing facilities in Europe. In all cases it creates the opportunity for Irish enterprise to embed themselves in these new supply chains as a country that although we're on the northwest of Europe we're at the absolute heart of European thinking and hugely positive to the European project. The second disruptor if I can call it that is the move to a green and digital future and I'm choosing a little because that's actually two disruptors. Creating a Europe fit for a digital age is one of the EU Commission's six stated priorities for 2019 to 2024. This drive to focus on digital infrastructure, digitization of public services and digital transformation of business is creating huge opportunities in cloud, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and many more digital accelerator areas. These are all markets where Ireland excels and our growing reputation as a key digital leader in Europe will serve us very well in this. Under the European Green Deal the EU has set its sights on being the first climate neutral continent on the planet. This presents a major opportunity for European industry and hence Irish business by creating markets for clean technologies and products. This will have an impact across entire value chains and sectors such as energy, transport, construction and of course the products and services that support these and other industries. And the third area of opportunity I'd like to highlight this morning are the national recovery and resilience plans currently being put into place by governments across the EU. Next generation EU is the EU's plan to invest coupled with the EU's long-term budget over two trillion euros to make Europe greener, more digital and more resilient. This is the largest stimulus package ever financed in Europe. The key element will see the European Commission borrow up to 750 billion euros from capital markets to provide resources to help push the green and digital transformations. These funds will be spent through grants and loans for which member states need to submit national recovery and resilience plans. Member states are required to allocate at least 37% for green and 20% for digital transition projects. The remaining 40% can be allocated to any other priority but focused on resilience and recovery. In addition each member state has committed investment in a range of their own national priority issues. This increased investment in the European Union member states represents a pipeline of new opportunities for all business including Irish companies operating across the room. And I have spoken a lot about exporting because that's what's most frequently on our minds and it is a really important source of income for Ireland and for Irish businesses. However trade if it's going to be effective has to be a two-way street. Irish businesses employ over 230,000 people across May 9 Europe. That's actually an employment contribution larger than the entire employment base of the same companies in Ireland. Business is also relationship building and its collaboration. We'd encourage companies as they look at Europe to look at a partnership model when developing your business. I expect this is something we'll hear more about this morning. In addition good businesses need access to talent and skills to reliable supply chains to funding and investment opportunities as well as access to markets. Our membership of the EU gives us access to all that across the European Union. So in conclusion we are ambitious for our enterprise and for the Eurozone and we believe that the Eurozone is central to future goals. Our membership of the EU and our adoption of the Euro gives us the full benefits of the biggest free trade agreement in the world and access to a market of 340 million people operating on just one currency. It's almost 50 years since Ireland joined the European Economic Community in 1973 and it's nearly 20 years since we adopted the Euro. Our membership has had a significant influence in transforming Ireland from a country that in the 1950s believed protectionism was its best option to one of the most open economies globally. And we have made great progress in this market but it is still relatively untapped and that represents enormous opportunity and it's very exciting particularly in the context of the changing supply chains and the drive to a green and digitized world. Our reputation for dynamic companies with highly sought after and innovative solutions and a flexible approach to business put us in a great position to reap the benefits of the biggest free trading area in the world. So I'm really looking forward to the discussions this morning. I'd like to thank Michael Collins, Director General of the IIEA and it was a pleasure to meet you this morning Michael, Dana Bryant, Chief Economist and the entire team at the IIEA for their support in organizing this forum here today and also to congratulate them on what is their 30th anniversary year for the excellent work they do in supporting much stronger ties with Europe from an Ireland perspective. I'd like to particularly thank our guest speakers this morning Tobias Spica, Greg, John and Michael and I want to especially acknowledge my colleague Anne Lanigan, our Director of Europe at Enterprise Ireland who's worked so hard to make this series a success. But most of all thank you the Irish business people in the audience, your hard work and dedication that is the foundation of this economy is hugely appreciated and it is a privilege for us at Enterprise Ireland to serve you and of course don't hesitate to reach out to Enterprise Ireland in the Eurozone if we could be of assistance. Thank you Dan. Many thanks Leo, many thanks for those kind words and also for the wider scene setting that you've done for the event this morning. Now we're going to move to our panel discussion of people involved in business across the continent. We have four speakers this morning from a range of different perspectives who will initially open with a few minutes setting out their own situations giving you some idea of what they do and their backgrounds and then we'll have hopefully a very rich discussion amongst that panel and you're also invited to send in questions via the zoom function at the bottom of your screen. Let me briefly introduce the four panelists. We have Greg Cain, he has worked in the fintech industry for 26 years and has been directly involved in client technology initiatives on the ground in 62 countries in operational consulting, commercial and management roles. Before joining MONEX financial services Greg held positions with digital equipment corporation, Missy's International Banking System, CR2, Central and Finneuribot, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Greg lives and works in Dublin and Dubai, where he holds a secondary role as the general manager of MONEX Middle East. He's a regular speaker and participant in global financial industry events. Tobias Lund was born in, is a German after finishing his master's in business and economics in 2005, he began his career in Ireland working with Hertz car rentals. He returned to Germany in 2008 and has worked in different sales and logistic roles until he began working for water wipes in Irish company in 2017. At water wipes Tobias is responsible for business development in various markets and is currently country manager Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Poland. John Power is managing director of SGL, a strategic financial advisory firm providing services such as strategic financial planning, outsourced CFOs, outsourced CFO services, funding and treasury advisory to the SME sector. John is an experienced finance professional who along with his SGL team specializes in working with SMEs on their financial strategy and implementation. He has spent over 20 years working in financial services and advisory firms, developing a deep understanding of financial markets and the financial markets and the landscape, the participants and the various challenges faced by Irish SMEs. Last but not least, we have Vicky Bangorp, founder, co-founder and COO of FibriCzech. After completing her master's in business administration at the Catholic University of Leuven and a master's in finance at Leuven School of Business and Economics, Vicky became a member and began a career in mergers and acquisitions with the NP Power Barbatis in Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris and New York. Over the past seven years, Vicky has built up an extensive has built up extensive experience in the digital health space, pioneering the FibriCzech responsible for businesses and marketing. Vicky has successfully rolled out various business models including multiple collaborations with international blue chip companies, reimbursement tracks and a successful B2C implementation. So with that, as I say, I'd like to go to each of the panelists for some introductory opening brief opening remarks to set the scene about their experiences, their organization on the relevant topic of expanding in European continental European markets in alphabetical order. May I go to Greg Cain first? Greg, the floor is yours. So Monax is a fintech which operates in the in the in the card payments space specifically in the area of multi-currency payments and treasury effects activities related to that. My role is commercial director for EMEA and the Americas. I am based in Dubai. I've been at the side of a rugby pitch in 40 degrees a heath since five o'clock Irish time this morning. So my day's well underway here. Monax, I joined Monax in 2011 and since then we have tripled worldwide profits and increased European profits by a multiple of about four. We've grown from a position where we were working with a handful of financial institutions in Europe in 2011 to today where our services are used by over 30 institutions on continental Europe. We've also established during that time new business in three additional continents where we weren't present before but we're not here to talk about that today. Also in Europe at the moment we've got a 10 country contract with a large European financial institution underway which will contribute significantly to our bottom line. So for me I've got responsibility for multiple areas of the world but the one where I actually like to work most is Europe because I find we can be more predictably successful in Europe. I find that and I'm taking this really from a sales perspective and in terms of running a business my view would be if the sales part is right then you can invest your way out of an operational issue and I think everybody knows if you're going to get the sales right. IBM is IBM because good people sold IBM technology early in its growth and throughout its growth. So really what I'm talking about today is purely the sales side of things. So what we find is in other parts of the world when we're in a sales process we have to kind of ask ourselves two things. Will this client buy this solution or service from me and will this client buy this solution or service from anyone because a lot of procurement or evaluation processes which kick off around the world never really result in anybody being awarded a piece of business. What we find is generally in Europe if a prospective client embarks on an evaluation process it will result in somebody being awarded the business. So and of course then as a commercial organization your job is to make sure that your organization is the one that wins the business. Our business in Europe the business that we've achieved has really been I would say 50% direct and 50% via partner channels and it's the partner channel piece that I'd like to talk about today because I think the partner channel piece is the piece that other people can probably replicate. So if you think I think there's often an element of naivety among Irish companies that just our Irishness and our likability as a people it means that there's people all over the world waiting for an Irish company to arrive and sell them some great stuff. That isn't the case as we know. There are great companies all over the world who've already got lots of great relationships and as an Irish or as an unknown Irish organization particularly a tech like Monics there's the challenge that you receive a request for proposal in the door your first question is should I respond to it and your second challenge is there's a request for proposal there there's a eight or twelve week sales process and you've then got to build a relationship through that tender process to try to win the business when actually building relationships is kind of against the rules of a tender process once it started so what we did was you know from 2011 onwards we looked at organizations which had a proper logical commercial functional fit for what we provide and they're European giants and we selected our giants well and then we proceeded to stand on the shoulders of those giants and so what we do is we're enhancing their product offering and it brought us to a position where we've managed to avoid tender processes all over the world and particularly in Europe because we've positioned ourselves as an additional module of an incumbent system which doesn't require a tender process so you know there are countries where we've won a hundred percent market shares without having to participate in tender processes at all because of that strategy now there's there's a bit of there's a bit of trust in that you know you've got a trust a company which was unknown to you a couple of years ago to license your solutions to resell your solutions we kind of approached it in a phase basis where we started with organizations introducing us and eventually reached the point where they were able to license our technologies directly to their clients and so commercially in terms of avoiding competitive tender processes which always put pressure on your pricing that's been a very successful thing for us the other thing that it's managed to achieve is we basically we've got we've got pre-packaged solutions instead of us arriving into a financial institution and starting an integration process it enables us to effectively pre-integrate so for MONEX our typical implementation time technical implementation time with a new client would be eight to twelve weeks through that partner model and the pre-integration model we've really cut that short to the extent that our most recent partner go live was with a bank in northern Europe and we actually completed the implementation in three days so from from 12 weeks to three days what I'd say in relation to I'll just take about another 90 seconds if that's okay then but I'd say in relation to partner management is it's not it's it's not macho elephant hunter sales stuff and partner management is often kind of seen as a home for failed salespeople or a school for a new salespeople and I think that's well our experience has shown that that's absolutely wrong you if you if you get a sale right to the right partner and that partner properly accepts you and then you've done 10 sales in that one move so what you've got to do is you've got to you've got to you've got to really give it the gas you've got to really give the time you know I remember my first big deal in in in Europe in 2008 I've been I've been in Africa and other places until that time you know of 14 meetings maybe with in the pre-sale process with the clients nine of those were with a partner strategizing about how we were going to do things so my advice would be apply your best people to to to establishing partner sales channels and give it some give it some real real objective thought and what you may find is you may find that one of your best partner options might actually be a competitor ostensibly a competitor but which has one solution gap that you might feel and I've I've seen it I've seen it you know I've seen I've seen one particular Irish organization which was really struggling in competition with the UK organization and I just happened to be sitting with the guy one evening and we talked about and and he had a he had one really nifty component which his partner didn't have or which is switches competitor didn't have this organization which he hated and he eventually found a a mechanism to have a proper conversation with them and they actually just took that component and he made more money from them selling that component than he had made from all of the other aspects of his business so and I suppose you know the last thing I'd say on it is you know what what you're doing what you're doing in establishing a partner channel is you're asking large European organizations it might be it might be top Gemini in the Netherlands you know it might be at us origin in Belgium you're asking large organizations to trust you with their clients so that's that's that's a bigger sell than selling your own software or services or or hardware or whatever it might be to one client so it really does merit proper consideration efforts and energy and and it and it also needs to work we've all heard before you know the is it better to have 100 percent of of nothing or 80 percent of something we all know the answer to that so you've got to come up with salute with partner structures which work operationally and functionally but also financially so you know one of the things that are that are an early conversation that I'll have with that with a senior person in a prospective partner organization is how much is it going to cost me for you to take a call from me at 80 you know and if and if and if and if I don't have that right then it's just not going to work it really and and I guess to finish off I'd say what we see elsewhere in the world is we'll we'll we'll talk to potential partner organizations who are really just collecting logos for their business cards the partnerships in Europe if you if you get an organization that they're of the right scale and commitment and you get it right it'll just run itself and and you'll hopefully find yourselves in it in a much in a much sharper position when it comes to avoiding particularly avoiding competitive processes and I'll be here for the rest of the of the of the hour if there's any questions etc many thanks Greg just in an opening one if I may how do you find the partners that you approach and how do you approach them you know there's no there's no magic wand you know then it's it there's it's it's a lot of it's really sitting back you know you need to you need to have people who know the industry and and know who's doing what and and research that industry and and take a few months over potentially but we we we attend a lot of conferences I speak at a lot of conferences you know I suppose the businesses that that I've worked in over my time are our businesses that probably have some sort of logical synergy to what I'm doing so it's it's really about kind of sitting back and looking at the people you've worked with previously because they're probably going to have moved off into into other organizations so you know no no silver bullet but I would just say time and energy okay that's great look I'm sure we'll delve into that a little bit more as we go on next up in alphabetical order is Tobias as a parent of a five-month-old baby I have been using your products a lot lately so looking forward to hearing hearing your experiences and thoughts thanks a lot and thanks for the introduction also and good morning to everyone here yeah as then said I'm working for a water wipes water wipes is an Irish company producing one single product a very unique with a very unique technique a baby wipe and this is very different to other baby wipes in the market that's why the the that is one part actually of the success and if you ask me why should Irish companies expand to continental Europe or to Eurozone and specifically I can just give water wipes as a good example how it can go if you make this decision the water wipes way before 2016 2017 was exactly the way I believe a lot of companies in fast-moving consumer goods Irish companies and fast-moving consumer goods or any other sector took expanding from Ireland where they have launched the product very successfully to the UK and in a second step to the US both very successful but then at one point growth is limited so the logical decision to my understanding also for water wipes was to go to continental Europe and that was a very successful move so 2017 when when I joined there was a turnover in Eurozone very little coming from some some companies actually seeing the product in the UK market and contacting a water wipes can I have to tell it here can I have a container here so starting there from turnover of around 2 million and we will finish this year already with a turnover in the EMEA zone that is not only Europe but main parties is coming from Europe with around 30 million so that is a quarter of the total business regard at the end of this year we have been able to open up 35 markets in this the four years coming of course with a lot of complexity also and there I can just say and we learned to also choose your battle as well if you if you want to expand do your homework before choose the markets you want to go and which which fits to you not every product is suitable for every market for every consumer another figure we have produced for the European market in 2017 around one and a half million packs it will be more than 20 million this year so from from this point of view I can only encourage Irish companies to to go a similar way if the product is suitable and and if they are willing and that I believe is a story of success of water wipes it is a very product with a very good usp and fits in many markets the timing has been very good because at this time when we started expanding to Europe there was no similar product in the market and also the idea has to be there has to be the ability and also the willing to invest in the market but if these three main pillars are given I believe Europe with all the advantages we heard this morning from from you and hearing that it's five times bigger than than UK only the Eurozone and if you are in Europe you have access to the retailers which sell also outside the Eurozone if you go to a to a Rossman in Germany you have also most probably access to to a Rossman in Poland even though if it is it is another in another market also a drugstore like Miller is selling from Germany or from German account to to many other Eastern European markets and to finish my my my five minutes introduction I can just echo what what Greg said try to find the right partner the the European markets are very complex and are all very unique and of course there is a language barrier so for for especially for the beginning it is very important to have the right local partner at site who can guide you with consumer needs who has perhaps better access to data is aware of local registration because it can also vary from market to market even within the Eurozone or the European Union yeah also here for the rest of the panel discussion for hopefully many great to buy so many thanks for that couple of couple of questions I'm curious about the different markets in in Europe the different national markets which ones did you find easier to access and which ones were a little more difficult and what were the reasons behind that so and markets to easier access was for example France I believe because the the the the product was very suitable there for for a special channel for for pharmacy channel a premium price level was was better accepted market harder to access was was for example Germany but also Spain because of a very low price consumer expectations in this baby wipes category and that's what I mean with saying not every product is suitable for every market fascinating interesting we might pick up on that and those different consumer preferences pricing issues later on in in the discussion uh John power John floor is yours thanks Dan and good morning everybody and thanks to Dan and the IIEA and Enterprise Ireland for putting on this this important webinar and from my point of view I come at it from a slightly different point of perspective to our industry panelists and that we are a corporate finance consultancy we've been working now for well over five years with Enterprise Ireland working with client companies both in the private sector semi and and the semi state sector but particularly with those who are exporting SMEs our our focus is working with SMEs and I think we've worked with hundreds of companies at this stage particularly as we saw in 2016 the Brexit vote came out and the impact that currency at that time was having on Irish SMEs trained with the UK so who SGL are we are a team of industry focused finance professionals so way back we identified that we saw that Irish SMEs really needed to improve their finance capability and we saw an opportunity and a need to help Irish SMEs so what we provide is we provide strategic financial planning forecasting and budgeting services we focus very much so on the funding and treasury support and again as I said we focus our attention on that SME markets who require the assistance more than anybody so what I'm going to try and bring this morning is our experience of working with the hundreds of SMEs we've worked with and the impact that particularly currency can have on an SME the need for it to be managed but more importantly the importance of understanding how lucky we are in the Eurozone with having a single currency and being members of the Eurozone market which as everybody says is the is the largest free trade area in the world we're a strategic location for that single market we are members of that single currency and I think we're all probably focused this morning is on the impact that the members of that single currency can have on a company's margin and we focus constantly on margin so I'm listening to the guys talking about sales and developing sales but our focus is on maintaining that sales converting it to margin converting it to positive margin and moving that into into profit and bottom line so I think that's where I'll focus this morning I'm really open to any questions Dan in terms of how companies want to develop that market in the EU the potential impact it has on their margin by being members of that single currency and and the difference you can make to the bottom line to that margin and the impact that currency volatility has on a company through the sales cycle we're looking at peak to trough if we take the if we take the UK and the pound at the moment we're looking at peak to trough even from April to to August we're looking at peak to trough moves on that currency of in around you know seven eight percent for most SMEs that is their net margin white for a lot of trading companies that is straight to bottom line so the importance of understanding the impact that being members of that single currency can have that seven or eight percent is maintained by trading with the eurozone and in the single currency so that that's where I'll focus this morning thank you great thank you curiosity that struck me while you were speaking John the range of margins of the companies that you deal with it's interesting you can have a SaaS business that can generate you know quite high levels of even net margin 30 40 percent very often they're not overly concerned about any type of currency volatility but if we take our SMEs trading in any type of commodity product we're talking about tight net margins three five seven percent so managing currency and the impact that has on a margin particularly if we look at pre ten years ago we would have seen relatively lower levels of volatility and currency but in the last 10 years and you know yourself Dan as an economist we're seeing quite high levels of currency volatility you know 10 percent annually is a common occurrence now but if you're if you're trading very often multiple currencies so you're buying in dollar you're selling in sterling now you've got multiple relationships and and you've now got to manage multi currency cash flows you could see the 15 20 percent swing on both sides of that transaction very easily through the sales cycle and being able to protect that at the at the other end at the sales end in terms of being able to sell into the eurozone where you no longer have to worry about the hedge you know for a lot of Irish companies they are experienced in in hedging strategies because we've been dealing with the US and and the UK for so long but those hedging strategies generally carry a cost and there is an embedded cost in there of the overhead the transaction costs and then totally if you do have a hedging strategy you you will more than likely have to place deposit if you're buying forwards and you will also have the cost of that of that forward and embedded in there in terms of credit cost that's in there so there is a cost it does protect but there is a cost okay we might go into a little more detail about the cost of hedging later on but to to finalize our our opening round of speakers and on the panel we it's a pleasure to go to you BK hello everyone thank you for for having me say my name is is BK I'm one of the co-founders of Compium a Belgian company that we started back in 2014 within Compium we have actually two business units one is Extra Horizon where we offer a medical backend as a service to other companies that want to bring their medical devices faster to the market but actually we learned everything with Fibrišek digital application mobile application that we built ourselves to detect cardiac arrhythmias just using smart phones are smart watches with a clear goal to prevent strokes today we are a team of of 40 people across the different business units and Fibrišek has been used by over 600,000 1000 people globally initially being a Belgian company I would say that of course we focused on our on our home markets but as with Ireland I mean the home market is is rather small so you know that you need to to scale fast to to make it work and like many and and certainly from a B2C perspective we looked immediately towards the the UK and to the US given yeah both the size but also the language which was which was easier and and certainly for the UK it turned out to be a good strategy but then when it came to to partnerships and so mainly B2B collaborations we did learn that for us this tend to go better in in Europe and we also learned that with partnerships as initially we tried to roll out a kind of direct sales approach ourselves but yeah basically we failed the the product I mean Fibrišek was too small to to do it all ourselves so we just realized we needed partners and I would say to to structure our our efforts what we tried to do was always to work with with glue ship companies that were present in in different countries build up a relationship with with them certainly looked for internal champions which was very very important for us and then started within one country moving to other countries very concretely on our side as a small company we have collaborations for example with with Roš with with Pfizer with Dai Chi Sankyo and although these companies of course are not all European we do feel that most of the of the partnerings are within within Europe or certainly started within within Europe based on connections and and fit so for us that that proved to be a very good model and of course with the partnering they could support us as well in in localization because I heard it a couple of times but it's very important to assure that the the product it's localized certainly in in its communication towards the end users of course in its language so there we had a big support from our partners as well. Because one of the again what I thought that question about how you you mentioned blue chip you like to look to deal with blue chip companies and find internal champions within those companies to work with easier said than done how do you go about that? I think for us it took of course a couple of steps that you need to have certainly a proof label you need to have your product in the market in our case I mean clinically improved adopted to yeah to be able to knock on the door but but basically with a couple of them we were able to get in through accelerate programs that they organized themselves because often also on their side they want you to collaborate with smaller companies and and do the best I would say of of both both worlds and then for us actually with with all of them it was truly finding about the internal champions that we really really need to bring us further internally because the structures are so challenging and when you truly have somebody that can basically attach their career to a successful collaboration with you you know that you're on the on the right spot and then you need to invest a lot of time and efforts to bring it towards a success but as I think Greco regularly said I mean by bringing it to a success it can be more easily translated than for example other countries and often within Europe and then by yeah doing one one line you get actually way way more business opportunities than doing it like yeah I would say step by step all with different partners and the champions that you have within these bigger companies do they tend to be on the sales side not necessarily we try always to have like a couple of champions but in our case of course being very clinical and medical product we also like to have like clinical champions champions on the on the medical medical side but also on the business side so yes there is always business people involved but in our case it are not the only champions okay good so we've got a half an hour to discuss things if anyone has any thoughts about what any of the other panelists have said would welcome any developing those conversations at all I know we've got a couple of questions in already from the audience so we'll also put those questions but just to kick things off and as I say each of the panelists are very much welcome if you have a response to anything the other panelists have said but that issue of market differentiation within Europe we may be in a single market but clearly there are linguistic barriers there are cultural barriers there's a whole range of things that make doing business in Sweden different from doing business in Spain I wonder if any of you Tobias has touched on this with his product I wonder if any of the three of you have any thoughts on on that and the differences and the difficulties of the costs of differentiating Greg yeah so something I should have mentioned down earlier is one of the ways we found quite effective in identifying partnerships is through EI actually through the EI local offices and some of them have been really helpful to us in finding the right partner organizations and again you've got to kiss a lot of frogs till you find a prince sometimes so you might talk to 10 organizations and eventually find one that works in relation to differentiate different market experiences look for us the big thing is as a tech you know for us the big thing is you know will a potential client buy a solution or build one and there are areas on the continent of Europe where builds in-house builds are more likely so there are there are certain countries where you know we and this isn't going to be relevant to to medical devices or to the water wipes thing you know car 4 well car 4 isn't going to it has its own line of wipes I guess but it's not going to try to copy yours specifically but in our in our business you know as we go towards the east of the continent the likelihood of in-house builds competing with our solution is it becomes a lot more of a concern for us so the further east we go the more likely we are to see an organization listening to our ideas saying it's really good asking us for a whole bunch of information and then building that themselves you're on mute done still making that error excuse me uh BK was interested in your point about expansion and the expansion to the UK and the US for language reasons now most of us are envious of of of you uh Flemish folk who can speak perfect English French Dutch and often German as well I was interested that UK and US was mentioned before Germany a country a big market right on your border you can drive over to in in in short in a short time just might explain to us while the UK and the US preference preference over Germany for example and was not a language issue um I would say yeah partly of course it was um a language element for sure um but also um we were quite early in the digital health space with people I mean we're often seen as a as a as a pioneer being so early and I would say at that point in time because of course by now time things have changed um the UK and US were were more open towards it more adaptable towards it its users were more adaptable towards it certainly in the B2C context we still feel it today um they are more prepared to pay it themselves for it based on how the healthcare markets are working so I think it's both a matter of how markets are working uh language barriers um but certainly not only um language barriers okay and in terms of competition and openness to competition openness to new entrants have you found a difference in culture and difficulties across the European market are some markets more welcoming of competition and is it more difficult to access certain other markets I think being like again but this is very specific I think for for the healthcare space um I do feel that a lot of countries like local companies as as much as possible I mean it's it's healthcare data it's I mean it's very sensitive elements but again there I mean with time you you feel that this is uh this is opening opening up um so maybe for us the the French market was a little bit more protective on um on that side um but overall I think um if if I just speak in in in the now and and today uh no most markets are certainly open to to international companies and we do feel often that they prefer actually to have like European countries there you do feel the the connection which I mean I think is a very positive element for um for European companies as well we we often have it when we um are in discussions in yeah in the European context um that the other sides likes to have European companies as well at a table and and maybe that we even have like a small advantage compared to non-European countries companies sorry interesting interesting John I'd like to to come to you in terms of the your experience of businesses across different countries within the single market any particular thoughts on on those on the differentiation strategies or countries that you found easiest to to break into and build build build client base yeah a lot of client companies we have seen to they seem to have a preference to enter Europe via uh the Netherlands they probably find it the easiest country to trade in uh more open to trade um I'm I'm interested on Tobias's comment earlier because we've seen that as well in that what a number of the client companies we have we have what they've done is they've leveraged the relationship maybe one large customer and that one large customer then introduces them to maybe one or two other markets in the eurozone so leveraging um that one initial relationship if it's a really large uh partner as Greg has mentioned if it's a really large partner we're seeing a lot of the smaller SMEs that we would deal with who will struggle to to develop uh in the eurozone and they will leverage that one initial uh customer or partner they have to almost infiltrate the other markets in the eurozone and again I know I'm probably uh I'm probably telling everyone I have to suck eggs here but I would not underestimate the power of having eight offices around Europe from Enterprise Ireland and I don't think it's possibly leveraged enough in that you know you have events running in those local markets and you have opportunities to meet other customers and by leveraging your existing customers along with local market presence from EI I think that's how a lot of companies that we've seen have managed to penetrate that European market interesting interesting Tobias maybe come over come over to you your your business is slightly unusual in the in the sense that you have a single product I think in a previous event we've done here there was advice on trying to expand product range as a way of generating extra revenue so as I say it's like maybe unusual in a company that you focus on one single product what what are your growth strategies and have you found in some markets that you've really saturated the market and it's difficult to grow further so the growth growth strategy of the business is is clearly in the markets we are already existing and and there to become number two number three baby wipes a brand with the right level of invest behind it with the right distribution expansion behind it besides having so much a headroom for growth in in the existing the channels and existing business and in the core with the core product we are also working on still on the expansion of the rate range yeah for example it is possible to have wipes for refreshing or wipes for on the go it is possible to have the same technology for wipes for carers so for for adults not just for babies that is directions in which the business thinks at the moment I would quickly like to come back to the to the question how to find the right partners because I think it's a very important one and in in our case we we work together with with local distributors so so the a local partner which has the access then to retail because we cannot have an office or an entity in every market we are present in and also as I said earlier that the knowledge of these partners is is very very important and the connections are of course very very important and how how did we find them and I have also to say like like John mentioned Enterprise Island was a big help here Enterprise Island is very well connected you can use the offices you can use their their networks it it was an extreme help beside that there's always local chamber of commerce and in Germany for example which offer similar services and what also was very helpful and what brought us a lot of context is visiting fairs having either a booth on on a trade show on a trade fair in a congress or just walking over it and and talking to people in from the same category that was how how we find or found the right partners in the market great and if anybody wants to come in there I've got a question from the audience I'll put to you Greg did you want was your hand up there yeah just to say one thing that we found that can work really well in terms of identifying a partner or who the players are an EI has helped us with this a lot is to get an hour with a KPMG person or an Accenture person in a country you know that to sit down with somebody and just work out who likes who who hates who here who you know you went to a company you went to a country like Slovakia you know and in Slovakia there was a really good Irish guy was a partner in one of the big consulting organizations I spent an hour with that guy and it was like doing an MBA in Slovakian currents of thought you know so those places are a really good place to start and again and you know somebody from Accenture or KPMG or you know they're always glad to speak to it to somebody coming in from outside with new ideas as well so it's something that you'll get for free and that's it that's probably the the quickest best way to start to work out who to okay I'm I suspect a lot of the participants are scribbling that one down as a takeaway from this morning's event look let's go to some of the questions we have Silvana Landam who is from the Irish luxury accessories company and she asks about the retail scene post pandemic how important is maintaining physical presence clearly a lot of purchases have gone online during the pandemic she asks in your respective businesses in your experience how important is the retail experience maybe to us go with you maybe I take up on this one yes it is true that what that's what we have also seen that people tend to buy more online that was already before the pandemic the case that online channel was the fastest growing one and yeah of it helped the online channel very much but still I can talk about our category still the the main part is offline still it depends from market to market but let's say around 80 percent is offline sales so yes it is extremely important to be present there and don't underestimate the the that the consumer actually finds your product usually of course also online through research but usually when when going shopping and on shelf that that is that is the main communication space and the the better visibility you have there and the better distribution you have there offline the higher is the mental availability of of your product okay in terms of retail presence are you all online or do you do you have a retail store presence no we are completely digital so yeah no experience on the retail side okay good okay another question from Manus Rooney he directs his question to you john he notes very correctly that trade figures import export figures show that Irish SMEs are importing less from the UK post Brexit dramatically less Arlen sources a lot of raw materials from the UK however he asks revenues still remain in sterling what are you seeing in terms of FX exposure better or worse polls on the future he asks you're muted there job yeah good question from Manus so just about five years ago there was a concerted effort to promote with Irish SMEs to begin the process of looking at the supply chains and perhaps moving to a more EU centric supply chain base and to begin to move away from so much reliance on the UK and we're seeing I think we're seeing the manifestation of that now where you're seeing you know import figures from the UK particularly with the introduction now post Brexit of both tariff and customs from the UK that has accelerated and the need for Irish companies to begin to source supply chains more openly from mainland Europe however as Manus rightly points out we're still reliant on the UK in terms of revenue because that's a traditional market for us so the exposure now is generally it's either it's either euro or dollar on the supply side and with still a significant export exposure to sterling on the revenue side and I see sterling possibly and it's impossible to predict here but you could see possibly sterling being left weak and left to continue to weak to make the UK more competitive on their own side and I think Irish companies will continue to explore the supply chain on their on the EU side but that revenue that margin protection on the on sterling I think could possibly weaken in the coming years and that UK market may not be as attractive as it once was in terms in terms of profit and forget about revenue but in terms of profit I think it may not be as attractive in the in the short to medium term Irish companies have so much pressure from a cost point of view coming at them at the moment we're seeing significant increases in supply chain costs on materials we're all hearing about it at the moment we have upward pressure on labour in the Irish market we have potentially higher inflation as you well know Dan it's certainly in the short term forecasted interest rates may well increase so there's lots of pressure coming at Irish SMEs at the moment and again the whole point of this session is around developing the EU and by and and by taking advantage of again the single currency and eliminating some of that uncertainty it can only be a good thing and I will say to one of the other questions earlier on retail somebody mentioned retail there is there is certainly particularly for online retail so B2C and you are seeing I think EU customers starting to focus in on where can I buy my goods in the Eurozone where I put where I traditionally may have bought them from the UK they're seeing those costs now come through because unlike a business it's passed fully on to the consumer so those consumers are actively now looking for EU centric EU based suppliers where they don't have to carry any of the customers or tar costs on the import so and we're seeing we saw with Amazon you know introducing a bid whereas in to Ireland that's going on across the Eurozone Irish SMEs can definitely benefit from that move that's going on at the moment and I follow a question slightly different tack John but a question on on regulation in your industry issues around anti-money laundering all that sort of thing do you find it uniform across across the European Union or do you find maybe some countries gold place EU level legislation and it becomes more onerous in some countries than others so that issue as a as a financial services provider do you find it different to different countries the way regulations are both introduced and applied yeah I mean Ireland is probably one of those gold places countries now in terms of regulation we we've gone from a scenario of maybe like much 15 years ago quite heavy touch now and you're seeing it in particularly the banking sector at the moment and how we regulate our banks and the capital requirements in there and we do have home and host and passporting across the EU and without getting into too much detail it's pretty uniform across the EU you do have the UK coming out of it now they do have a transition period in terms of regulation but what that will look like post transition period and only time will tell them okay Greg I'd sort of get get your perspective on that similar that question similar space yeah so can can we just come back to just just one thing that was asked by Silvana there a minute ago that we didn't there was something I just wanted to add to that it was in relation to the retail point so two things to contribute there so firstly we are in the fort in a position monics as an organization we have a we have a software application that runs on pretty much every point of sale terminal in the country Portugal so we've got a pretty good good view of what's going on there in those retail places and we do there's a lot around luxury accessories stuff and Silvana yes um the you know we're seeing a strong recovery in in in retail in shops particularly around accessories and and but when you ask that your question was yeah do do we do we still do we do we hold the view that organizations should still seek presence in in retail locations for the products and you mentioned the Middle East so absolutely in the Middle East where I happen to be based it's not the topic today it was 40 degrees outside here shopping centers are very much part of the social fabric of the country so if you want to get accessories into the Middle East luxury accessories you absolutely should have them in in in in retail stores it's it's fundamental to family life here because people can't walk outside the place where people go for a walk is in a shopping mall so we're a little bit off topic but there now Dan sorry the other question was that issue about as a financial services provider regulations across Europe is is it helpful that there's so much of the regulation is done at at an EU level so it's the same in different places or actually are things different um do different national markets have different regulatory standards different different things that you need barriers difficulties in doing business um for for for for for monics purposes we've just had some legislation brought in by the EU which looked looked scary initially but has worked out we would say really well for us so so and um really our so really our regulatory authorities day-to-day our visa and master practice are global organizations okay so so for our purposes what what we probably would experience would be more small technical just localized technical issues as opposed to regulatory issues to to be surmounted for example you know that some some countries will have a massive big national transaction control system that that that we that we'd have to connect to so there wouldn't be legislation attached but you might get a powerful local organization which would flex its muscles and maybe make an integration a little bit more difficult for us yeah good good good good look we're coming to the end of the panel session um it maybe if there's anything anybody john i see you want to come in before we hand over to to our our final speaker um just final thoughts if anybody has them john uh floor is yours yeah just one other point and it's actually going back to your last point down on on regulation um and i i i have mentioned it before but we are members of the single euro payments area as well and i think that shouldn't be underestimated as well because we speak of a currency on one hand but then we also speak about the transaction costs and the time in terms of receiving and making payments and we are members of that that sepa area so in terms of it an irish company dealing with a customer in Milan for an irish company it is no different to dealing with that customer in modern gar it is it is effectively a domestic market in terms of currency and payments and the speed at which you receive them so it is really as good as it gets in trading in in the eurozone that would be our almost my closing remarks in terms of this session is that uh you know i know i know uh our minister for foreign affairs once said it during the brexit process he said look we live in the the ultimate trading environment in terms of the eurozone and and when the uk leaves the EU it will not be as good and that has absolutely transpired the eurozone and the single currency is the utopia of trading environments for irish companies and i think we should definitely be maximizing the benefit of that and we possibly haven't to this day been overreliant on the uk and the us to smaller extent but certainly the uk we should be maximizing that advantage that we hold good good very much the purpose of this session and these the series of sessions is to demystify the continental market as much as possible for those businesses here in ireland who are thinking of expanding and going international so um that's a very well made point john uh if none of the other panelists have anything more to add as concluding remarks we will go to our final speaker of the day and indeed sirius uh michael osullivan who joins us from paris michael osullivan is an investor and thought leader he advises fintech companies and his co-founder of we invest women empowered to invest he's on the board of the gain good all legacy foundation he is a member of the world economic forums council on the new economy a forums contributor a speaker at the 2020 ted talk conference he's 20 years experience in global financial markets most recently his chief investment officer in the international wealth management division of credit suisse where he worked for 12 years uh he was an independent member of ireland's national economic social council from 2011 to 2016 and he's the author of a number of books and has contributed to journals such as foreign affairs the financial times wall street journal in addition to being a regular guest on tv stations such as cnn vbc cnbc and bloomberg mike you're very welcome and look forward to your thoughts this morning hey dan good morning uh yeah so just just to start i'm i'm based in paris uh uh involved in two small startups here one in finance the other kind of a very small beer project which has taught me a lot about doing doing business in france um also done business in germany and and obviously worked in um in switzerland i'm i suppose my my starting point in trying to help people make sense of of the continental market is this is submarines um and the the reneging on a submarine deal by uh australia to to france and what that tells us about our own place in the world and to ireland it's a bit like our cousins kind of beating up on our new best friend and i say that because you know from france and germany many of them associate ireland with the english-speaking world um and you know for different linguistic cultural barriers so i think my my first piece of advice will be on um on culture um you know if you look at the uk economy there's a supply chains around the uk be it an energy uh in food in supermarkets are under massive uh stress you know fizzy drink makers have got two days worth of carbon dioxide you can't get english beer or cheddar in in france etc etc so there's there's a a short-term uh opportunity for irish exporters into europe to take the place of um those from the uk so that's a kind of a short-term imperative in the longer run um i think there's a couple of things that exporting businesses from ireland can do uh to start with culture one is is really invest in language um as a nation we're not great at speaking languages including our own um so you know if you are a company looking to say the french and german market take some of your younger employees and actually station them there and get them into the culture get them speaking the um the language and then they act as a sort of a pivot into that country i think the other thing as well is have a story to tell that will differentiate you irish business etc from uh the the rest of the english speaking uh world and try and make that as kind of unique and impressive as possible and focus on things like um like like innovation that then the other element i think is just to go back to the eu i mean i think there is a at the very top level in europe there is this talk about european values etc and that will take time to to become tangible but uh there are some very very um concrete policy initiatives going on across europe that economies in france and germany italy are really beginning to take up so it's green energy um it's getting women more involved in the economy etc and i think our companies need to be very aware of these kind of threads and strains and on one hand you know craft their their own narratives according to those and also use them as sources of uh of funding and momentum for for businesses um that then there's all the specifics are trying to interrogate um local markets um and i think you know europe is strange in that um the individual markets are quite different in how they they operate so in france uh there's a very very strong network effect um whereas within industries companies their owners etc bound together and type networks that you know depending on school region etc and if you want to break into supply chains you have to break into those networks and and identify how those networks work um i think as as relationships developers companies can also look at things like uh like acquisitions quite a good way to uh to to grow um and also i think um innovation and the post covert economy uh is something that's i mean if you look at france the whole venture capital private equity industry is is absolutely thriving there's a sort of startup uh mania here lots of investment things like programming the digital economy um and there's even things i guess that Irish companies exporting into these countries can can pick up um and learn as well um so i i would sort of invest before i think um before embarking on a big sort of export initiative uh invest in understanding the industry how it works from a human social point of view um and also the various kind of ownership structures our Ireland's actually is quite a i find an easy and transparent place to do business uh and for some of the questions i have about businesses here i'll email someone in Ireland i get a i get a reply straight away we email someone in France you you won't get a reply until you actually go and physically see them and they they trust you you know France is a as a low trust society Ireland's a very high trust uh society so just be aware of all of these cultural issues uh because despite the uh the common market they they're still there but the point i would make is that once you get into them um then you're in kind of for uh for for good um and maybe the last thing i would say just in in my experience i mean there is uh a strong appetite in certainly in France maybe switzerland as well two countries i know for goods and services that are at the very very higher end be it in food or financial services um and Ireland is is a leader in some of those areas and people shouldn't be afraid to to to push that great um thanks for that mike just want to pick up your last book was quite downbeat on globalization and that we were entering a period of de-globalization a lot has happened since the book came out clearly the pandemic being been the the sort of world-changing event uh talk of strategic autonomy in europe that sort of thing what's your sense within europe uh about how integrated things are in europe do you think there has been no major implications from the pandemic do you think it's still as easy to do business across europe as it was um how do you see the pandemic having effect having effect yeah doing business in europe i mean i think it is um i mean one thing i would love to see is that there's for example a common european template for setting up a business because it it can take in one country like 10 days and other two days um i think it's getting a lot better um i think the so if you look at retail um trade the digital digital economy before the pandemic was five percent of of retail activity now it's 31 percent so there's been a been a huge change there um i i do think this whole uh idea of de-globalization and globalization giving way to kind of regionalization um is is very much in train and it's happening in europe so where you know where i live in paris you can really sense that this is the center of political energy on europe but you know all the ideas the initiatives are are being driven out so we we we post brexit we are firmly in europe um i suppose my point that culturally where we're still kind of in the english-speaking world but the the next five 10 years in europe you have more of this strategic autonomy you know in battery technology um in ai uh other other aspects of of um uh you know data as well and this is this is the big mega trend that irish companies i think if they want to thrive we'll have to jump on and and i think for many irish companies that you know the marginal penetration they can make and maybe the us the uk is quite low but the marginal market penetration and presence they can have um in some european markets can be very very high um so things like you know doing r&d partnerships either between companies or universities research centers is is really important um i think also better understanding how e-u level and and local level government and financial support work uh are also very important i mean in in france there's the the bpi which is a government investment bank uh which is probably the the most complete public investment bank in in europe and gives a lot of support so that there's there's there's you can really sitting here you can really sense that europe is moving towards um a sort of a more it's slowly moving towards more kind of coherent uh pan european economy with very specific kind of trends as i said in green energy batteries all that kind of stuff but at points i i i made constantly in the run up to the brexit referendum is that imports imports matter more than exports now i know entourage arland is very much focused on the export side of things but as an economist uh my big concern around brexit was that if there were if there were really serious disruptions with a no deal because arland imported so much stuff across a whole range of food products to to nuts and bolts that there could be serious disruption in in in arland because everyone consumes not everyone exports um one of the things that's that's been surprising over the years has been that irish companies continue to source from the uk even after the launch of the euro now as you you know you mentioned this increased regionalization do you see irish companies looking at the eurozone particularly post brexit as a source of importing the nuts and bolts the ingredients for their food products um you know those those things they need for their own businesses do you see a shift happening towards the european market as an import source i see it happening slowly down i mean i think if i look for example it's you know you take kerry or glombia or even c or h you know top level irish companies they all have a presence in nearly every state or many of the states in the u.s um they're penetrated into into latin america but but maybe much less so um into into europe um and there's there's no reason i mean that if you look at the diversity of food uh across europe just to to focus on that example there's no reason why they shouldn't be shouldn't be doing that and also potentially across uh east in europe as well and just just as a sort of a final point i mean one in in france in business it is very much focused on these kind of networks where once you get into this kind of network or conglomerate of companies and suppliers it tends to be a two-way street so irish companies exporting may also at the same time uh import certain component parts of their supply chain from that same network great good well look thank you to all of our speakers uh this morning we're coming to the end of uh of both this event and the and the series of events we've been running um i'd like to hand over uh to ann lannigan of enterprise ireland to to bring matters to a conclusion uh this idea for the series of events was ann's it was her idea to try and demystify the continental market as much as possible for for irish companies and i hope we've done that i feel feel that we have um but i think it'd be very appropriate for ann to uh to close out the uh this series of events uh that we've had the pleasure of working with her on over to you thank you dan and thank you to all our speakers today to to michael to devise to be good to greg to john and of course to our own uh ceo uh leo clancy um and a very big thank you to the iia you yourself dan and michael collins and all the team for collaborating with enterprise ireland on these three events not just the event today and but most of all thank you to the audience irish business for showing your interest in european markets and attending our event today and indeed the other two events i really hope that you leave today with a clearer picture in terms of the opportunities for irish business in what is the biggest free trade agreement in the world the eu but also to understand the opportunities in the eurozone so those 19 countries who have adopted um the euro and you know as we talked about the opportunities in the changing landscape in europe so around supply chain disruption digitalization the green economy and the recovery funds a very large recovery funds that are being put in place right across europe we all know that disruption creates opportunity and this is where the irish are actually really good so we do need to seize the day and really take advantage of the opportunities that are sitting right here on our doorstep and we've heard about the challenges and i hope that you found it useful to listen to the participants today and to hear how they have addressed the challenges and the tips that they have provided in terms of how you might go about and really reaping the benefits of these markets and we simply can't ignore this untapped opportunity so i am the eurozone regional director for enterprise irons and based in amsterdam and we have eight offices across the eurozone and our market advisors in those offices stand ready to support irish companies who want to export into europe whether that's starting out or actually scaling the business that you already have in europe but we do ask that you come prepared you really need a market entry plan if you're going to enter into markets before you land in front of a potential buyer and we do in enterprise irons have training and supports to help you through that process as well so i would suggest if you are a client of enterprise irons that you talk to your development advisor about those supports if you're not a client of enterprise irons but you do have ambition to export we'd love to hear from you so please do contact enterprise irons and again we can provide supports to bring you to a stage where you're ready to export and our door is always open my door is always open very happy to support you where we come so i guess i'll leave it at that and once again thank everybody for the participation today and i really look forward to seeing you all in the eurozone great many thanks ann as i said it's been a pleasure doing this series with you it's been very informative and as i said very much hope that we we helped demystify in some way accessing the european market for those participants that have joined us over the three events who are thinking of either getting into european markets for the first time or expanding there's still a lot of issues to be discussed the opportunities of the green agenda supply chain problems that are currently going on so i suspect we may come back to this issue next year and delve back into the opportunities again but let me thank my own colleagues in particular darrell lullar who's done so much work on this thank you ann and enterprise island and leo and thank all the panelists today and from the previous three two events it's been great to get your time it's been very generous of you to share your thoughts with us as we approach 9 30 right on time thank you particularly the audience and hopefully you've got you got a lot out of it so thanks everyone for assisting on this and sharing your thoughts and sharing your time have a good day