Localization
Why translating your website isn’t localization
The words are the easy part. The proof, the pricing and the sales process are where the market decides you’re foreign.
Go further than your home market.
We help companies from China and APAC enter Europe and the Middle East. Then we help them find customers, localize and grow there.
Announcing a new market is easy. Getting traction in it is not.
A strong product at home is the starting point, not the plan. The gap between the two is mostly friction, and most of it is predictable.
- Different buyersWho decides, how they evaluate, and what they’ve been burned by before.
- Different languagesNot just the words. The tone, the proof, the level of detail people expect.
- Different channelsThe platforms and partners that work in Shenzhen rarely map onto Munich or Riyadh.
- No local teamNobody on the ground to take the meeting, chase the lead, or hear what’s really being said.
- No first customersReference customers open doors. Before you have them, every conversation starts from zero.
Each of these is solvable. The mistake is trying to solve them all at once, usually by hiring a local team before knowing what that team should do.
We are not a consultancy. We are not an agency. We sit in between.
A consultancy says
“Here is what you should do.” Then it leaves.
An agency says
“Send us the brief.” It runs the campaign, whether or not the market is ready.
SilkyGate says
“Let’s work out whether this market is right, make the product feel native, then go and find the first customers together.”
StrategyLocalizationExecutionGrowth
Four kinds of work. One expansion.
Start with the one you need. They connect, in roughly this order.
Which market, which segment, which buyer, and in what order. We research the market properly, size the opportunity honestly, and turn it into a go-to-market plan you can act on next quarter.
- Market research and sizing
- Competitor intelligence
- Customer and buyer research
- Opportunity analysis
- Go-to-market strategy
- Market-entry strategy
- Regulatory and ecosystem mapping
- Partner and distributor research
- Channel strategy
- Pricing research
Translation is the smallest part of this. Positioning, proof, pricing pages, onboarding, support, the way a demo is run: all of it has to feel like it was made for the buyer in front of you.
- Website and product localization
- UX and UI adaptation
- Language and cultural adaptation
- Brand and messaging localization
- Content adaptation
- Local SEO
- Local market positioning
- User and usability testing
- Conversion optimization
- Localization QA
Demand doesn’t appear because you arrived. We build the outbound engine, the partner motion and the marketing that produces qualified conversations, and we run it until it produces revenue.
- Lead generation
- SDR and outbound sales
- Account-based prospecting
- Email and LinkedIn outreach
- Pipeline development
- Partner acquisition
- Demand generation
- Performance marketing and paid acquisition
- Content marketing and SEO
- Campaign development
The execution layer for your expansion. Fractional local teams who represent you, manage partners, test the market and run operations, so you can prove the model before you hire for it.
- Fractional local teams
- Sales representation
- Business development
- Partner management
- Market and product testing
- Launch support
- Local operations
- Growth experimentation
- Ongoing market management
- Customer development
From where you are to where the next customers are.
We work the corridor between APAC and the West in both directions, and we’re deliberate about which markets we take clients into.
APAC
Where most of our clients start. We understand what got you here.
- China
- Hong Kong
- Taiwan
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Japan
Europe
Dozens of regulatory regimes, a handful of buying cultures, and one very large single market.
- United Kingdom
- Germany
- France
- Netherlands
- Spain
- Italy
- Nordics
- Central and Eastern Europe
Middle East
Fast-moving, relationship-driven, and actively looking for partners from Asia.
- United Arab Emirates
- Saudi Arabia
- Qatar
- Wider GCC
Next
Where clients take us, when it makes sense.
Don’t start by hiring ten people.
Expansion works best as a sequence of small, reversible bets that get bigger as the evidence gets stronger.
01
Discover
Market, customer and competitive landscape, in weeks not months.
02
Validate
Real conversations with real buyers before any large spend.
03
Localize
Positioning, product, messaging and experience adapted to the market.
04
Launch
Outbound, channels and acquisition switched on with a local team.
05
Learn
Measure what actually works. Kill what doesn’t, quickly.
06
Scale
Invest harder once the model is proven, on your terms.
The situations we’re usually called into.
- Launching a Chinese SaaS product in EuropeEnter, Localize
- Building a Middle East sales pipeline from scratchGrow, Execute
- Testing demand before opening a local officeEnter, Execute
- Localizing a consumer product for European customersLocalize
- Finding European channel and distribution partnersEnter, Grow
- Building an outbound sales engine that a local team can inheritGrow, Execute
We publish results only with the client’s permission.
A lot of expansion work is confidential by nature. If you’d like to hear about comparable engagements, ask us in a conversation and we’ll share what we can.
Field notes
Short, practical observations from cross-border work. No listicles.
Europe
What APAC SaaS companies underestimate when entering Europe
Europe is not one market. Treating it like one is the most common and most expensive first mistake.
Expansion
How to test demand before opening an office
A sequence of cheap experiments that tells you more than a lease and three hires would.
Thinking aboutyour next market?
Tell us where you are and where you want to be. We’ll tell you what we’d do first.
Talk to SilkyGate