We face a number of challenges. One that we're currently facing is managing our supply chain. Our supply chain is optimized for selling into Canada, but this means that we often have challenges selling into our other markets, particularly with differing rates of duty on the product.
For example, we can import product produced in China into Canada at about a 13% duty rate, but into the EU the duty is almost 48%. When we're choosing our vendors, we often have to choose the vendors based on where we want the product to end up. Because of the limited scale of the Canadian market, it's often difficult for us to double-source a particular product in multiple factories, and so we have optimization for Canada and for other markets.
Concerning marketing dollars, in the Canadian market, based on its scale, it's hard to generate significant profits and revenues to market on a global basis. In Canada we compete against global brands. In everything we do to build products, we are competing with companies that have much larger domestic markets to support their scale.
Another impediment we have is banking. Often the Canadian banks are great at supporting us in Canada, but as soon as our working capital needs for international expansion go beyond a certain comfort zone, it's difficult for them to provide financing. We use EDC to insure our foreign receivables, but that doesn't really help with working capital, particularly for inventory.
Certainly languages and cultural issues are always an issue when you go to foreign markets.
Those are probably the three things: product development, competing against larger brands with bigger resources; the marketing; and the financing.