The Client — Lumara is a direct-to-consumer wellness brand founded in Austin, Texas. After strong domestic performance — $18M in US revenue by Year 3 — the board set an aggressive goal: meaningful international revenue within 12 months. The leadership team had never run a cross-border expansion before.

The Situation — The CEO had a shortlist of 7 potential markets based on instinct and some desk research. There was no structured framework for evaluating them, no clarity on which markets shared enough demand characteristics to enter simultaneously, and no understanding of regulatory, logistics, or channel dynamics in any of the target geographies.

The board deadline was 90 days to a launch decision. Twelve months to first meaningful revenue.

The Challenge — Consumer brands often underestimate how much of their domestic success is non-transferable. Brand voice, pricing positioning, fulfilment expectations, and even product formulation requirements vary significantly across markets. Entering the wrong market first — or all seven with equal focus — was a real risk.

The bigger risk was the opportunity cost of delay. A competitor had recently raised a Series C and was eyeing the same geographies.

What We Did — We ran a structured 6-week market evaluation across all 7 candidate markets, scoring each on demand signal, competitive intensity, regulatory complexity, channel accessibility, and brand fit. Four markets emerged clearly: the UAE, Australia, Germany, and Singapore — each for different but well-reasoned strategic reasons.

We built a tiered entry model: UAE and Australia as primary launch markets with full brand investment, Germany and Singapore as secondary entries via distributor partnerships. We developed a market-specific pricing and positioning guide for each, a 90-day launch calendar, and a KPI framework for evaluating traction at the 6-month mark.

The Results — Lumara launched in all four markets within the 90-day window. UAE and Australia exceeded first-quarter targets by 34% and 28% respectively. Combined first-year revenue across all four markets reached $6.1M. The distributor model in Germany and Singapore is now being converted to direct operations following strong early traction.