In the process of going global, it’s been a busy year growing the King River brand and herd. International expansion has seen us venturing across the UK, Europe, the USA, Canada, Mexico and Asia, testing our marketing strategy and operation against competitors, and getting in front of new customers. But that’s not all we’ve done: here’s what we have been learning.
Expanding horizons at Asian trade shows
An important market for King River, we’re working towards diversifying our coverage of the Asian market by building relationships. Our travels saw us leaving with new business, in part, thanks to our presence at trade shows across Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
Trade shows are not only an ideal platform from which to judge our business model against competitors, but also to accelerate our entry into new markets. By utilising these, we’re able to display our real, tangible business and product to key industry figures, establishing King River as a serious international player.
Events such as Seoul Food Hotel 2025 gave us the opportunity to place our product in front of over 45,000 visitors, maximising our output to effort ratio, and accelerating our exposure within the market. It’s also a chance to educate customers new and old on our brand and product, leading to new partnerships and sales growth.
Translating Taste: How culture shapes demand in the Americas
While building relationships in Toronto, America and Venezuela, we were surprised to find the largest difference in operations to come from America. Here, rather than meeting with importers, we had to adjust our approach, working backwards and starting with the chefs.
Here, our Wagyu was showcased to chefs and culinary experts to spark their passion for the product and enthusiasm to purchase. This turned out to be mutually beneficial, providing us with valuable insights into the different specifications and cuts that are expected and desired, as well as an opportunity to share our own recommendations.
We can’t understate the importance of understanding how different markets operate and relate to Wagyu, or the different specifications and information new clients might require before committing to purchase. In navigating this, we lean on our own multicultural team who help us to better understand and connect with different regions, establishing cultural competency.
One size doesn’t fit all: Adapting through connection
A key takeaway and boost for our business model was that no matter the geographical or cultural differences, people connect with the King River story and team. They just want to deal with real people, and identify with our people-first mentality. We listen to our customers and want to be as well connected to them as possible, so moving forward we’ll be getting more of our team out meeting with clients and building that familiarity that is so synonymous with King River. This exchange builds trust and offers our customers a unique opportunity to have a direct point of contact across their purchasing journey. This in turn, provides us with an accessible stream of quality feedback allowing us to proactively improve our procedures.
The biggest lesson: relationships are everything and can mark the difference between a successful, ever-evolving agile business and a dated, malfunctioning one. Being able to meet face to face with our customer base builds trust and inspires partnership success.
We know each region will have unique requirements, so rather than offer a one size fits all approach, it’s important to us that we get to know our customer base in order to determine how we can best cater to them and tailor our cuts accordingly. We’re all about going the extra mile to meet with customers and get our Wagyu in front of them, hand delivering products to chefs, and samples to new importers. It’s our mission to meet face-to-face with as many of our international customers as possible to better understand them and to build that connection. The King River product will always speak for itself, for us, the focus is on relationships and trust and how these can translate to better business practice and customer experience.
Your market, our mission
So, where to from here? Our growth strategy is pretty straightforward: consistency across all channels and regions. To us, this doesn’t mean pushing the same products everywhere, it means consistency in relationship building, consistency in communication, consistency in quality, and consistency in tailoring our offering to your particular needs, after all, you know your market best. We’re not here to push product, we know you’re the experts of your own regions and we want to capitalise on this in our mission to offer you the absolute best Wagyu we can.
This year, our direct market engagement confirmed what we’ve always known: that relationship-driven business models provide sustainable, competitive advantage in premium beef exports. Receiving the global confirmation that our strategy is working affirms that at King River we’re establishing ourselves as a mainstay in the industry.
