Throughout
the past week we had one of our distributors—ES Korea—visiting Seven Cycles. ES Korea sells more Sevens than any other
distributor. They visit us a couple
times each year to work with us on business development. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they’re
amazing. I could write a long list reasons
they’re amazing; today I’ll post just one.
The tougher the world gets, the smarter, more thoughtful, and harder they work. And the more closely they partner with Seven. Rather than shutting down—psychologically—or looking for reasons that life’s tough, they step up and out of their space of expertise.
By way of example, if one considers the US economy to be in a spot of difficulty, the South Korean economy is in freefall. The South Korean Won has been devalued—relative to the US dollar—by more than 40% in the past six months. This is a crazy change, and it makes it very difficult to sell high-end products—Sevens, for example—in South Korea right now.
In this
type of economic freefall—we’ve seen it before in other countries with which we
work—there are only a few strategic stances a company can take:
- Give up and find another business
- Hunker down and wait out the turmoil
- Take some big, “bet the company” risks—a Hail Mary or two—and keep your fingers crossed
- Get creative and forge a new path
Which direction did our distributor choose?