How many Finnish online products are targeting European markets? More specifically, consumer oriented online products?
If I’m not wrong, there are very few. Overall, the number and scale of B2C product businesses in Finland is much less than in the neighboring countries. Among these few are some that are “born global”. As a rule, their target market is the USA, not any of the European markets.
I’ve been trying to find successful Finnish B2C online products whose target market is Germany, Spain, France, or Russia. There are many good reasons to target the EU markets, in addition to the 370+ million people online. The Western European countries are big, there’s much less competition than in the USA, the culture is similar to Finland’s, and the time difference is manageable.
East is even more interesting. Russia is the biggest European market in terms of unique users, the growth rate is rather healthy (~9% per year), and it’s just across the border for us.
Households with Internet access, by region
I can name a number of Swedish B2C online product businesses that are expanding to the European markets. But in Finland, there are only five??
- Holvi is the first to come to mind. Their product is super interesting and I think they are going to take advantage of the new EU-wide banking regulation in their mission to make banking better for us.
- Web of Trust has exciting partnership in Russia with Mail.ru. Russia is already a big market for them and visibility through Mail.ru and others sound good.
- Ostohyvitys.fi is focused on domestic audience but they have at least a russian version as well. Let’s see what comes out of that.
- Scoopshot is in English on the web, but their mobile app is translated to e.g. Swedish and Russian. In Sweden they have strong(?) co-operation with Metro: Scoopshot.se.
- And of course, our Nimenhuuto has Mojakomanda.ru, Kadermanager.de, and Yaentrainement.fr.
Can you suggest additions to the list?
Maybe Finland just is a B2B country. There are many interesting B2B online products that look to break in Europe, such as Enreach, Cabforce, Muuvit, Analyse2, Happy-or-not, …
In today’s Helsingin Sanomat newspaper professor Erkki Ormala writes Eurooppa jää jälkeen digitaalisilla markkinoilla (Europe’s being left behind on digital markets).
He points out a good reason for NOT targeting Europe: the regulation is different in every country and makes it difficult for a start-up to expand to new markets.