Expansion is hitting a wall with local managers

[Roony]

I finally took the plunge and tried to move my electronics empire into the South American and European markets simultaneously. Everything looked solid in the city reports, but my domestic management team is clearly overwhelmed by the new overhead and regional tax shifts. I thought hiring high-level COO talent would fix the logistics, yet my profit margins are shrinking because I can't seem to find the right international partner for structuring these offshore branches correctly. My current setup works for a single city, but it's falling apart at this scale. I’ve tweaked the internal supply chain and adjusted prices, but the core organization still feels messy. Honestly, I've been looking into different website to see if their operational structuring could handle this kind of cross-border expansion better than my current mess. Anyone have experience with them, or a better way to organize global headquarters without the micro-management nightmare?

[mrgarrettscott]

The COO definitely cannot fix the logistics. Only you can do that. Generally, logistics are simple in a single city because the freight cost is minimal compared to shipping outside of any city which always requires the use of a seaport even if the the cities, geographically speaking, are in same nation. So, one thing you could take a look at is how much it costing you ship your electronics to different markets. The freight cost index is an excellent tool to determine how much the shipping cost is relative to the product cost. So, an item with a high freight cost index should be manufacturer locally; whereas, a product with a low freight cost index can be centrally distributed by a warehouse.

Another place you might look is wage rate of the city. Cities with lower wage rates are not going to pay the highest prices on low necessity index items. Consider a food item vs the desktop computer. Recessions can also impact profitability of low necessity items.

This is me simply speculating on potential problems. With any real information, it is hard to diagnose your expansion problems. I rarely have any problems expanding city to city and I play always play with 15 cities.