Quietly Respectable

Dr. Lee: I'd like to use today to test our assumptions about opening in Poland, rather than simply rubber-stamp them. Grace, you've done the market research. Grace: Yes, and I'll start with the encouraging bit. Demand for our kind of product is plainly there; the category has been growing steadily. What gives me pause is how that growth is distributed. Almost all of it is online, and the online space is already crowded with competitors who can outspend us on advertising. Frank: Which rather undermines the premise, doesn't it? Our advantage has always been the shops, the relationships with independent retailers. Grace: In the home market, certainly. Over there we'd be starting from nothing. I'd say it would take us two years just to build the same level of trust. Dr. Lee: I take that on board, but I'd resist the idea that we're starting from zero. Our best-selling title already has a translated edition that's been distributed there through a third party, and the sales have been quietly respectable. Frank: Quietly respectable is a generous description of a figure that small. Dr. Lee: Fair, but it tells us something. Nobody has been pushing it, and it still sells. Grace: So what are you proposing? Dr. Lee: Not a launch. A test. Six months, one distributor, no new office, and a modest budget. If it's still quietly respectable at the end of that, we reconsider. If not, we'll have learnt cheaply. Frank: I can live with that, provided we agree in advance what counts as success. Dr. Lee: Agreed. Grace, could you suggest three measures by Friday?