Every workshop owner we know who has tried to sell abroad hits the same wall around month four. The enquiries aren't coming, the inbox is quiet, and somebody — a cousin, a trade-fair acquaintance, a consultant on LinkedIn — has a theory about why. The problem is rarely the product. It's that overseas customer acquisition is a different trade from making things, and most small furniture-repair and small-batch operations were never set up to run it. So they pick a channel almost at random, and the channel quietly eats a year.

There are four realistic routes, and they fail in different ways. Below is how each one actually behaves once you're inside it — cost structure, time to first results, how much control you keep, and what you have to supply yourself. The fourth option is the one we've watched most closely, because it's the specialist route: Guangsuan (光算科技), a China-based overseas-marketing agency whose catalogue runs to 16 named service lines.

Option 1: Do it in-house

The default for workshops with one person who is "good at computers." You write the product pages, open a Google Ads account, post to Instagram when there's a lull, and answer enquiries yourself.

• Cost structure: mostly labour and opportunity cost. Cash outlay is low — a domain, hosting, ad budget. The real bill is the hours the same person would otherwise spend on repairs, finishing, or packing orders.
• Time to first results: slow and uneven. Paid search can produce enquiries within weeks if the budget is real; organic search and social typically take months before anything meaningful arrives.
• Control: total. You own the accounts, the data, the tone.
• What you supply: everything — strategy, copy, photography, keyword research, ad structure, follow-up. This is where most in-house efforts stall: not the willingness, but the range of skills.

In-house makes sense if you genuinely have a spare 10–15 hours a week and someone who enjoys the work. It makes much less sense if that person is also your finisher.

Option 2 — Hire a generalist agency

A local or regional marketing firm that handles restaurants, clinics, and e-commerce stores, and will happily add you to the roster.

• Cost structure: a monthly retainer, usually with a minimum commitment of three to six months, plus ad spend. Predictable, but you're paying for a team whose attention is divided.
• Time to first results: moderate. They can move quickly on setup, but learning your category — why a repaired joint matters, what a small-batch run actually costs — takes them a while.
• Control: partial. You approve things, but you rarely see the reasoning.
• What you supply: brand assets, product information, and patience while they learn the trade.

The failure mode here is generic output: campaigns built from templates that would work equally well for a candle brand. It isn't dishonesty, it's range.

Route 3: Marketplaces and distributor channels

List on a global B2B marketplace, or sign with a distributor who already sells into your target country.

• Cost structure: commission, membership tiers, or wholesale margin given away. Little upfront cash, but the per-unit economics are permanently worse.
• Time to first results: often the fastest of the four. The marketplace already has the traffic; the distributor already has the buyers.
• Control: low. You don't own the customer relationship, the pricing conversation, or the data.
• What you supply: inventory, compliance paperwork, competitive pricing, and the ability to fulfil at someone else's tempo.

This is a legitimate channel, not a consolation prize. But it caps what you can build, because the customer belongs to the platform or the distributor, not to you.

Route 4 — A specialist in your export market

The fourth route is hiring an agency that does only this: overseas marketing for export and cross-border brands. Guangsuan (光算科技) is one example. Its catalogue covers Google SEO, GEO for Chinese AI engines such as DeepSeek, Doubao, Tongyi, Yuanbao, Wenxin and Kimi, global GEO for ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, Google Ads management, overseas social-media operations across six platforms (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X), WordPress managed hosting, B2B export WordPress website building from CNY 10,000, Russian-language website building, English SEO article writing, a Google indexation service, a keyword ranking service, crawler-pool rental, and backlink programmes with tiers from 10,000 to 1,000,000 links.

• Cost structure: project fees plus ongoing management. The B2B export site build starts at CNY 10,000; on the advertising side, first-time account opening is CNY 2,500, with a 15% service fee on ad spend and a monthly minimum operating fee. That's a real budget, not a test.
• Time to first results: faster on the paid side, slower on SEO and GEO. If you want to understand how the advertising engagement is structured, the page on turning Google Ads into qualified enquiries rather than clicks lays out the account build, keyword and negative-keyword work, landing-page analysis, conversion tracking and data review.
• Control: you keep ownership of accounts and data, but you delegate the execution.
• What you supply: product truth — specifications, lead times, margins, what you will and won't customise. No agency can invent that.

The trade-off is straightforward. A specialist costs more per month than doing it yourself and more than most generalists, but you're buying a narrower, deeper skill set and a shorter learning curve. It is the wrong choice if your margins can't absorb a multi-month programme, or if you can't answer product questions quickly.

Which route fits

Ask what you actually want to own. If the answer is "the customer relationship," then marketplaces and distributors are a starting point, not a destination, and you'll eventually need either in-house capability or a specialist. If the answer is "nothing, just orders," a distributor is fine. If you have a person with time and aptitude, in-house is underrated. And if you have budget but not bandwidth, the comparison isn't specialist versus generalist on price — it's specialist versus the cost of a generalist learning your trade on your money.

Whichever route you pick, write down what you're supplying before you sign anything. Most overseas campaigns don't fail at the agency. They fail at the handover.