The decision starts before the RFP

An importer can be the fastest sensible route into a market, bringing local credibility, dealer access, people, systems, working capital and regulatory knowledge that an entrant would otherwise take years to build from scratch; that is a substantial advantage, but it is also why the appointment needs to be designed as part of the market operating model before procurement starts comparing bidders.

Inchcape's 2025 reporting describes distributor and vertically integrated models that stretch from the factory through to customer delivery, with parts, finance, insurance, used vehicles and aftersales around them, so an importer may sit across most of the market system. Our working assumption is that customer-data continuity, software-enabled services and lifecycle economics will make the allocation of control more consequential for many new entrants, although there is no single right answer across different markets, regulations, propositions and customer lifecycles.

Distribution control can also change after entry, as it did in October 2024 when Hedin Mobility Group and BYD completed the sale of the German BYD distribution business to BYD Automotive GmbH. The public record does not tell us that the original appointment failed, or why the change was made; it does show that control can move after entry, and when it moves the operating system has to move with it.

Procurement can compare bidders once scope, cost and risk have been defined, yet the importer decision starts earlier as it determines much of that scope in the first place: who owns demand planning and inventory exposure, who sets the commercial rules, who knows the customer, who can authorise exceptions, and who remains accountable when sales, service and cash begin pulling in different directions.

The appointment allocates the economics

Headline margin tells only part of the story, as the importer may also fund stock, appoint and support dealers, run campaigns, set local incentives, manage parts, administer warranty, finance demonstrators and absorb demand volatility. Each of those responsibilities changes the economics and, just as importantly, changes the information the OEM receives and how early management can see that stock, cash or customer recovery is drifting away from plan.

A proposal that looks inexpensive can become costly when the OEM has poor visibility of discount leakage, aged stock, campaign effectiveness or the real cost of resolving customer cases. The importer should earn a margin that reflects the role it is being asked to perform, while the overall design needs to produce the right behaviour through its allocation of risk, reward and information; before candidates are compared, the entrant needs one economic map covering margin pools, inventory and funding, warranty and goodwill exposure, parts economics and the treatment of unsold or obsolete stock. Without it, bidders are not pricing the same business, even when the spreadsheet makes it look as though they are.

The appointment allocates decisions

Market knowledge, relationships and network reach matter, of course, but they do not tell you which decisions the importer can make alone, which need OEM approval and which should remain with the OEM from day one. Local teams need enough room to respond to the market, and that room needs a visible boundary around price corridors, dealer appointments, fleet terms, customer remedies, parts stocking, campaign spend and data access, with named owners, thresholds and escalation routes rather than a general promise to collaborate.

Leave those rights implicit and the operating model gets negotiated case by case, often when the business is already under pressure; for a while that can feel flexible, until two parties make different decisions with the same commercial consequence and neither is quite sure who had the final call.

Customer ownership has to survive a change of model

The name on the invoice is a poor definition of customer ownership; in practice, ownership sits in the detail of who holds valid consent, who can see the order, service history and open complaint, who controls the identity record, who can contact the customer after a dealer or importer changes, who carries unresolved warranty and goodwill commitments, and which data can be transferred, in what form and at what speed.

All of this matters in normal operation and becomes critical during replacement, because a contract may allow termination while the customer journey remains trapped in the outgoing partner's systems, processes and permissions. Exit design has to start at entry, which means data models, handback obligations, record quality, integration documentation and the transfer of open cases deserve the same attention as notice periods and financial settlement.

Aftersales tests whether the model is real

Sales activity can make a market look operational before the full system is in place, while aftersales exposes whether it really works because a launch needs more than trained technicians and authorised repairers. Diagnostic access, technical escalation, parts availability, warranty authority, customer communication, mobility solutions and a route for cases that local workshops cannot resolve all need to connect, and even where the importer owns most of that chain, the OEM still needs to know where the capability sits and how a failure moves through the escalation path.

Describe aftersales only as an obligation to establish a network and the agreement records presence, but says very little about whether that network can resolve a difficult technical or customer problem when one arrives.

Governance is part of the commercial model

Reporting becomes governance when it leads to a repeatable set of decisions, using measures that both sides define in the same way, people who are authorised to act, thresholds that trigger escalation and a cadence at which trade-offs are actually resolved. Sales volume, stock age, cash, dealer health, service capacity and customer cases belong in the same management conversation because the decisions interact; without a decision owner, the monthly pack is mainly a tidy record of what has already happened.

Select the model before selecting the partner

A stronger importer process begins with the operating blueprint, before the request for proposal is written: define the market outcomes and the minimum capabilities behind them, allocate the economics and decision rights, make the non-negotiables explicit, then put candidates into situations that will occur in the real business, such as an inventory correction, a serious customer case, a software or diagnostic escalation or a change of network direction. The transition path belongs in that design as well, so responsibilities can move when volume, capability or strategy changes instead of being reconstructed once the relationship has already become difficult.

Procurement discipline still matters, including financial diligence, legal protection, service levels and competitive tension, but it only becomes useful when everyone is bidding for the same operating model; otherwise, the most reassuring proposal may simply come from the bidder that made the most favourable assumptions about responsibilities the entrant never defined.

An independent importer may still be the best route, particularly when it brings local capability, speed and capital that the entrant should not build too early, provided the role can be governed in normal operation, challenged when the evidence changes and altered later without losing the customer or the market. That is the standard the appointment needs to meet, and it is why choosing the importer becomes the first operating-model decision of market entry.