Finding a distributor in a market you do not know usually goes one of two ways. Somebody introduces you to one, and they become the plan. Or you meet a dozen at a trade show, they all say yes, and you pick on instinct.
Both are worse than they need to be, because in most of the world the information you want is already sitting in the registration record.
Start from the fact that changes everything else
Across most of Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, a foreign manufacturer cannot hold its own registration. It is granted to a locally domiciled entity, and that entity's name is on the certificate.
So your distributor is not just a commercial partner. They are the legal holder of your market access. Changing them can mean re-registering, and re-registering can mean months with nothing to sell. Across the markets where we can classify the relationship, roughly three registrants in four exist to hold somebody else's product rather than their own — this is the normal structure, not an edge case.
Everything below follows from that. You are not hiring a sales channel. You are choosing who holds your licence.
Starting with a web search or an AI assistant
This is where most people begin, and it is a perfectly valid place to start. A search engine or an AI assistant will give you names within minutes, at no cost, and for a market you know nothing about that is a reasonable first hour.
It gets harder quickly, for reasons that have nothing to do with the tools being bad:
- The results are in several languages. The companies that matter most in a market often have the least English on their websites. The ones that rank well in English are frequently the ones oriented toward foreign suppliers, which is a different quality from being good at selling to local hospitals.
- Directory pages crowd out real companies. Much of what ranks is aggregated listings, trade-lead sites and pages assembled to capture exactly this search, so you spend the time sifting rather than reading.
- A company website tells you what they want you to know. It will list the brands they are proud of. It will not tell you what they carry that competes with you, what they have let lapse, or whether they are still active.
- Absence is ambiguous. A distributor with no web presence may be dormant, or may be one of the largest in the country and entirely relationship-driven. The search cannot tell you which.
None of that makes it the wrong starting point. It just means the output is a set of leads to check, not a shortlist — and the checking is the part that decides the market.
What a shortlist has to tell you about each name
Whoever produces your shortlist — you, a consultant, or us — it is only worth acting on if it answers five things about every company on it. A list of names with none of these attached is a list of leads, however long it is.
1. Whether they have actually taken a product through this market. Not whether they say they can. A partner who is learning the process on your submission is a risk you should price, and one who has done it a dozen times in your category is a different kind of company.
2. What else is in the bag, and where you would sit in it. This is the question that gets skipped and matters most. A partner already carrying a direct competitor has a structural reason to keep you second, and it is the one thing they will rarely volunteer. Insist on knowing it before the first call, not after the second.
3. The shape of the company. A broad operation that warehouses hundreds of lines across every specialty is a different partner from a tight specialist in your clinical area. The first may move boxes and little else; the second is more likely to have the relationships that actually sell. Neither is automatically right — but you should know which one you are talking to.
4. Whether their portfolio is being maintained. A candidate who has let a substantial part of what they carry lapse is telling you how they manage renewals. Yours will be managed the same way, so it is worth knowing before rather than after.
5. Who they actually sell to. In markets with public procurement, whether they have ever won in your category. A partner who has not may still be right for you — but you should know you are betting on a first.
All five are knowable before you commit. That is the whole argument for doing the identification properly rather than from the three names you met at a show.
What to settle before you sign
Two clauses matter more than the commercial terms, and both are much cheaper to negotiate before signature:
- What happens to the registration if the relationship ends. Transfer mechanics vary by market and are sometimes genuinely difficult. Establish the process, in writing, while you still have leverage.
- Exclusivity tied to performance. Exclusivity granted flat is how a product ends up parked in a portfolio, legally held by someone with no obligation to sell it.
Why this is worth an afternoon
The realistic failure mode of a market entry is not a regulatory rejection. It is a granted registration sitting with a distributor who never really pushed the product, in a market where switching means starting over.
Almost every input to avoiding that is visible before you commit — who holds what, whose portfolio is live, who has actually won business. It is a strange thing to skip.