The mandate we turned down.

The situation

A client asked us to help set up a representative office in Japan.

What we did

• Benchmarked the product and analysed the market before anything was set up.
• Found two problems: the product was good but too strong for what the market needed, and the Japanese competitors had political connections that made winning customers impossible.
• Advised against the set-up, and declined any mandate for it.

The result

A clear decision before money went into an office. For us it meant no fee. For the client it meant no failed market entry, and the failure rate of Western market entries in Japan is high.

We would rather lose a mandate than take one we expect to fail.