The main one is the very high cost of living in the Bay Area. We were fortunate with our US market entrance as we had some very strong US business partners already in place. Most of these relationships had been developed over the two years prior to our expansion. These partners have worked closely with us in marketing our complimentary products to their customer bases. These relationships helped us achieve immediate cashflows, whilst at the same time, saving us the very significant marketing dollars normally required to attain such sales.
Marketing is extremely expensive in the United States.
Ensure that your products are ready for the US market. Make sure your sales channels are well identified and locked in before leaving home. One of the best ways of achieving this is to ensure that you have suitable US partners in place suitably who are motivated to help you market your product. In my opinion, this is one of the lowest risk forms on entry into any market. One of the unexpected issues we came across in our industry was the high levels of product returns by US consumers.